Nothing less than jail for plunderers
If anyone thought the peak bombshell moment of the season would be last Monday’s appearance of the controversial contractor couple Curlee and Sarah Discaya before the Senate blue ribbon committee chaired by Sen. Rodante Marcoleta, they had another thing coming.
The Discayas did appear, and named names—a raft of lawmakers and Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) officials who they said regularly extorted money from the flood-control projects their companies bagged from the government.
Among those named was Speaker Martin Romualdez, who promptly pushed back at the allegation. “The claim in the Discaya couple’s affidavit that my name was used for commissions is false, malicious, and nothing more than name-dropping,” he said.
A day later, appearing this time before the House infrastructure committee, Curlee Discaya made the belated clarification that he had no “direct transaction” with Romualdez or Ako Bicol party list Rep. Elizaldy Co, another lawmaker mentioned in the list.
And that’s how the Discaya cookie crumbled, at least for now. Marcoleta had apparently designed to spring the couple’s purported revelations for maximum impact at his hearing. But mere hours later, his fellow senators stole the thunder from him when a majority of them, unknown to Marcoleta, staged a coup and ousted Sen. Chiz Escudero from the Senate presidency, installing Sen. Tito Sotto in his stead.
Eagle-eyed observers
(Marcoleta was later stripped of the chairmanship of the blue ribbon committee under the new Senate leadership.)
Not only did the Senate merry-go-round swamp Marcoleta’s attempt at a grand reveal; the Discayas’ list was also immediately subjected to scrutiny by eagle-eyed observers, and found wanting. No senators were named in the list, for starters—seemingly a ploy to curry favor with their audience for the day.
Then there was the timeline: As Sen. Kiko Pangilinan pointed out, Sarah Discaya had previously admitted before the Senate that their firms began bagging big-ticket projects in 2016, the start of the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte.
And yet the Discayas’ list divulged names that allegedly got kickbacks from them only for the years 2022-2025, or those already under the Marcos administration.
Clearly this was an incomplete, slanted list, perhaps containing morsels of truth but ultimately designed to deflect, misdirect, and likely even cover up the true extent of the corruption and reach of the enterprise.
State witnesses
For former solicitor general Florin Hilbay, the insidious intent of the couple’s quick public confession was evident, as he explained in a Facebook post: “The Discayas offering themselves to become state witnesses in exchange for incriminating testimony is simply an echo of their business model: the sale of a corrupt project to the government.”
The Marcos administration is thus forewarned: Under no circumstances should the Discayas be turned into state witnesses. And it would likewise be folly to rely on their testimony for the whole truth and nothing but, because as things stand, their story, already sketchy and partial at this point, is coming off as only a small if illustrative part of the gigantic web of conspiracy that underpins the rampant thievery in public infrastructure.
Just a day after the Discayas’ revelations came an even bigger bombshell: DPWH official Brice Ericson Hernandez claimed that Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Joel Villanueva maneuvered to allocate P355 million in the 2025 national budget (for Estrada) and P600 million in 2023 (for Villanueva) for flood control funding in the first district of Bulacan, from which at least 30 percent in kickbacks were siphoned off.
Incriminating conversations
Day by day, more such damning allegations are dribbling out, which only underscores how this incendiary issue remains in flux, and nothing is yet settled. The difference in Hernandez’s testimony appears to be that, compared to the Discayas who came armed only with bare assertions, with not a single ledger in tow to back up their claims, Hernandez was ready with numbers and details of alleged compromised projects, as well as screenshots of supposedly incriminating conversations and mountains of cold cash.
Sifting through these records, and many more such evidence that may come out, can no longer be left to the House or the Senate due to glaring conflict of interest. Thus, the independent commission President Marcos has vowed to form to look into the institutional rot takes on even more urgency and importance, assuming that indeed it can exercise its investigative functions with independence, thoroughness, objectivity, and not least courage.
The beasts it will take on are, after all, powerful and well-funded, and will not go down without a fight. This administration better muster all its willpower and war arsenal to defeat these forces of darkness—because nothing less than jail time for the culprits is what the public now expects following open confirmation of the orgy of plunder going on.
