Facing mounting demands for his removal from office, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. pushed back sharply during a media interview in Canada on Saturday (Sunday in Manila), calling such calls “nonsense” and arguing that the entire flood control controversy surfaced because of his own actions.
Marcos framed himself as the person who brought the anomalies to light, pointing to his State of the Nation Address as the turning point. “If I hadn’t said what I said in the SONA (State of the Nation Address), we wouldn’t be talking about this. I’m the one who exposed all of this. And I’m the only one who has started to do anything about this,” he said. He questioned the logic of the accusations against him, noting that no prior administration had pursued the matter. “Have they imprisoned anyone? Have they frozen any accounts? Have they conducted any investigations? None. Only in this administration. Then they will say, I’m the one who did it. Well, if it was really my racket, why would I ruin my racket? That makes absolutely no sense,” he said.
On the question of selective prosecution, the president denied his administration was targeting anyone unfairly. “From the time that we formed the independent commission, I said we’ll just follow the evidence, and we’ll continue to do that,” he said. He explained that authorities have compiled records of both contractors and specific projects tied to irregularities, and that a previously disclosed list has since been acted upon, with cases filed against some contractors and their accounts frozen. Marcos added that not every name on the list proved problematic. “There were one or two where, although they were named and had large contracts, it turned out there was no problem,” Marcos said.
Marcos described the corruption as something built into the machinery of government rather than the work of a few individuals. “This is a deep-seated system of corruption that requires not only structural changes in the way government is run and in the way the budget is written, but also a change in attitude,” he said. He pointed to how some officials have normalized illicit payments, dressing them up in acceptable language. “They put all kinds of nice words to it, rebate or whatever. That’s a kickback,” he said.
The president cautioned that the work is far from finished, and that the scope keeps widening as investigators comb through government records. “I cannot say that we have done enough because we are not done yet. Unfortunately, the more we look, the more we find. And it is going already back beyond my administration, beyond my term,” he said. He traced part of the problem to earlier leadership, noting that former president Rodrigo Duterte had recognized issues in flood control projects without anyone being held to account. “Having acknowledged it, it did not find accountability in anybody. So, I guess that it was left up to me,” he said.
Asked about the Office of the Ombudsman’s move to discharge former Public Works secretary Manuel Bonoan as a state witness, Marcos declined to weigh in, saying the executive branch would stay out of the matter. “It’s up to the Ombudsman to decide on how to proceed with all of these investigations, and if he feels that former secretary Manny Bonoan will be helpful to the cases, it is his prerogative,” Marcos said.
