Lawyers for former House speaker Martin Romualdez have announced plans to contest a Precautionary Hold Departure Order issued against him by the Sandiganbayan, as the political fallout from the flood control scandal deepens and draws in Malacañang.
The anti-graft court issued the travel restriction Wednesday, citing findings by the Office of the Ombudsman that Romualdez might attempt to leave the Philippines to avoid arrest. He faces allegations of plunder, direct bribery, and malversation tied to the scandal.
Attorney Ade Fajardo pushed back sharply, saying her client remains on Philippine soil. “Any report or insinuation that he has fled is false and irresponsible,” she said, adding that Romualdez had been coordinating in good faith with the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Immigration to secure proper travel authority for what she described as a brief medical consultation in Singapore following his angioplasty surgery.
“This is fully consistent with his conduct from the very beginning — one of cooperation, transparency and respect for legal processes. Unfortunately, this legitimate act has been twisted to create a prejudicial narrative that he intended to flee,” Fajardo said. She added that Romualdez “remains committed to facing these allegations squarely.”
Romualdez himself has denied any culpability in the corruption-tainted 2025 national budget, arguing there is “no evidence that proves that he committed plunder, conspiracy to commit plunder, or any similar offense that the Ombudsman may be contemplating against me.” In a video message, the Leyte congressman contended that wrongdoing of the scale alleged could not have occurred through legislative action alone.
“It happens at the level of execution of the General Appropriations Act,” he said. “That is why command responsibility is more logically attributed to the Executive branch, where there is actual supervision, operational control and on-the-ground implementation, rather than to a collegial legislative body whose constitutional role is deliberation and appropriation.”
Without naming President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. — his cousin and former close political ally — Romualdez pointed to former Senate president Francis Escudero and former House appropriations committee chairman Elizaldy “Zaldy” Co.
The Palace addressed the remarks directly. Press Officer Claire Castro said Marcos does not consider himself implicated by Romualdez’s statements on executive command responsibility, noting that it was the President himself who ordered a probe into anomalous flood control projects and created an independent body to oversee it.
“Whatever defense will be made against the possible accusations against former Speaker Romualdez, that is his defense,” Castro said. “And if he is saying that the executive has command responsibility, that is precisely why the President gave orders: the matter was not ignored, there was no cover-up, and he initiated an investigation.”
Castro confirmed that several Department of Public Works and Highways officials, including former secretary Manuel Bonoan, have already been charged. She declined to comment on the current state of the relationship between Marcos and Romualdez, who stepped down as speaker in September last year.
From the opposition, Partido Demokratiko Pilipino deputy national spokesman Ferdinand Topacio urged Romualdez to go further — to publicly expose what he knows about government corruption, including alleged unconstitutional budget insertions. “We are aware that such revelations may involve close members of his family, including the President, and that he may be holding back information to protect certain personalities, but his recent warnings that he will spill the beans, as it were, should charges against him be politicized and he become the ‘fall guy’, indicates that Romualdez knows many things that will help unravel the Gordian knot regarding these massive anomalies,” Topacio said.
