MANILA: Thousands of Filipinos rallied across main Philippine cities on Sunday to protest a growing scandal over fake flood-control projects believed to have cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
Over the past few weeks, investigators have uncovered massive corruption in flood prevention and mitigation projects. An audit ordered by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. found last month that out of the 545 billion pesos ($9.54 billion) allocated to the projects since 2022, thousands of projects were found to be substandard, lacking proper documentation, or nonexistent.
Several powerful political figures have been implicated, according to ongoing House and Senate probes, igniting public outrage in one of the world’s most typhoon-vulnerable countries.
“The main objective of the mass action is to register the people’s anger with regard to the rampant corruption, the misuse of public funds, the fact that billions of pesos have ended up stolen by certain nefarious individuals with the connivance of certain government officials. That should be a cause for alarm,” Danilo Arao, journalism professor and convenor of election watchdog Kontra Daya, told Arab News at a main protest site in Luneta Park in the heart of Manila.
