Senator Rodante Marcoleta declared Tuesday that no detention would silence his campaign to name those he claims are tied to questionable flood control projects. Speaking in a recorded message, he warned that authorities could move to detain him within days.
“It is possible that one day, we do not know whether today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, a warrant of arrest may be served on me so that I may be arrested,” he said in Filipino. He urged the public not to be alarmed: “But please do not worry. Even if they arrest and imprison me, like what I say, I will not stop.”
The senator released the message after 18 self-described former “bagmen” of ex-lawmaker Zaldy Co assembled to make public their allegations surrounding the flood control controversy. Marcoleta said those accounts were meant to be delivered at what he called the closing session of the Senate blue ribbon committee’s probe into the supposed irregularities.
That June 11 session never took place, he explained, after a security threat was reported at the Senate, leading the group to voice their claims openly instead. The cancellation followed a June 3 shake-up in Senate leadership that installed Senator Erwin Tulfo as the panel’s new chairman.
Marcoleta argued that his role in the matter had made him a target of what he characterized as manufactured legal complaints. “And because of that, many people became angry with me, and I was even charged with cases that are all fabricated,” he said.
The Sandiganbayan recently handed down a precautionary hold departure order covering Marcoleta, former Quezon City representative Mike Defensor, Aristotle Baluyut Viray, and Joseph Varias Espiritu, stemming from plunder and indirect bribery complaints linked to roughly P75 million in alleged campaign donations. Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla has said the case against the senator rests on Marcoleta’s own public remarks about contributions he received during the 2025 elections, with his office having earlier endorsed the filing of those charges.
Marcoleta, who maintains he did nothing wrong, has cast the complaints as an effort to “punish dissent.”
