A tragic yearender
The last quarter of the year is supposed to bring smiles and material sources of happiness for many Filipinos and other people in different parts of the world who celebrate the Christmas season. Christian Filipinos are among the most enthusiastic, welcoming the year-end because of Christmas. Starting in September, Christmas songs are already being played on radio stations, and countdowns to Christmas Eve are done every day by almost all television station news anchors. Christmas spreads holiday cheer, as some caroling songs go, because it is a time for giving and receiving gifts.
But last Dec. 19, 2025, less than a week before Christmas Day, we were shocked by the news of former Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Undersecretary Maria Catalina “Cathy” Cabral’s passing. More shocking were the circumstances of her death (and there are some questions on whether she truly died or not). The story of her death—whether staged or faked—is truly one for the books, as they say.
This is not to desecrate the memory of her death. This is an attempt to understand her untimely death. Was it something that was her own decision, or forced upon her to protect those in more powerful positions who are involved in the huge infrastructure scandals?
Questions and issues raised about her passing surfaced after it was reported that one of her greatest fears was that of heights. She claimed she feared heights, scientifically referred to as acrophobia, an intense, irrational anxiety when seeing high places, which can cause panic, dizziness, and avoidance of tall buildings or bridges. So how can she bear the thought of jumping to her death from a deep ravine, whose height could be more than the vertical span of a five-story building?
Cabral was among the longest-serving government bureaucrats within the powerful and publicly perceived as a corrupt-laden institution—the DPWH. For 40 years, Cabral worked her way to the top echelons of the DPWH, the first woman to achieve such a position within a male-dominated Cabinet department. Prior to her resignation a few months ago, she was the undersecretary for planning and public-private partnership of the DPWH. Her service to the department started in November 2014, spanning the administrations of former Presidents Benigno Aquino III, Rodrigo Duterte, and Ferdinand Marcos Jr. In August of 2022, she was appointed to her former position as undersecretary.
Cabral figured prominently in the billions-worth of scandalous infrastructure projects that have been unraveled through a series of congressional hearings and investigations in the past three months. She was reportedly in charge of inserting “allocable” funds that would be shaved off from the bloated budgets of infrastructure projects. These funds, which are slashed from the original budgets of each project, were to be distributed to either members of the House of Representatives or the Senate who were known to have partnered with the DPWH for this purpose, through Cabral’s facilitation.
Cabral’s case was not the first, though. On Feb. 8, 2011, former military general and Department of National Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes died in an apparent suicide, according to investigators. Reyes reportedly used his gun and shot himself in the chest in front of the graves of his parents. Reyes had earlier figured in corruption scandals within the military which were revealed by another retired officer, Lt. Col George Rabusa, who testified before a Senate panel that Reyes received P50 million as “send-off” money upon his retirement from the military. All cases involving Reyes also died with him and were never reopened in Senate investigations.
Will Cabral’s death also lead to the same fate as the cases associated with Reyes? Will we forget all the papers and documents that demonstrate how and where the shaved-off millions or billions of pesos went as allocable insertions?
Recently, the Cabral family’s lawyer pleaded for compassion and respect for the memory of Cabral’s death. I will not begrudge Cabral’s family with my condolences on the loss of their loved one. But I want to see concrete punitive actions taken on those who were associated with Cabral and the huge amounts stolen from infrastructure projects. All evidence associated with what Cabral did, and of pinpointing who was behind all these scandalous actions by both DPWH officials and members of Congress, including even the highest executive officials of the country— all of this should be uncovered.
We cannot bury with Cabral the evidence of anomalies. We cannot allow the living key beneficiaries of the “allocables” and illegal insertions in huge infrastructure projects to go scot-free. Then it would be our tragedy.
—————-
Comments to rcguiam@gmail.com
