Before the month even ended, the public was caught off-guard as Elizaldy Co, the former House appropriations chair, has gone on record with explosive allegations, claiming that President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. personally ordered some ₱100 billion worth of infrastructure projects to be inserted into the 2025 national budget.
Co insists these were not routine legislative amendments but directives handed down from the very top.
In his public statement, he named Marcos as well as several cabinet officials as key players in the massive “insertion scheme.”
Co’s admission comes amid growing scrutiny of the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA), raising fresh doubts about how the government’s most critical infrastructure funds were allocated.
Although Co previously denied involvement in budget manipulation insisting he did not single-handedly decide on insertions and was merely following the congressional process, he now claims the scale and nature of the inserted funds go far beyond the ordinary legislative mill.
What makes Co’s confession particularly explosive is his assertion that the orders came not just from Marcos but were relayed through Department of Budget and Management Secretary Amenah Pangandaman during the bicameral process, lending the entire operation presidential imprimatur.
According to Co, the scale of the insertion allowed for projects in DPWH (Department of Public Works and Highways) to be shoehorned in without the usual checks and balances.
Yet despite Co’s damning claims, the current fallout paints a picture of unequal accountability.
President Marcos has made it clear that no case has yet been filed against Co, which he cites as the legal basis for not canceling Co’s passport though he vowed that once a case is registered, the passport will be revoked.
Not so surprising, Co has also pointed a finger at former House Speaker Martin Romualdez, but Romualdez’s name reportedly does not yet appear among those being considered for arrest, a detail that raises immediate red flags in political and legal circles.
Talking about the rationale of his coming-out video, Zaldy Co expressed disappointment that the entire machinery of the government is being used to make him look bad or become the poster boy of graft and corruption, despite Martin Romualdez’s assurances that they will take care of him.
Analysts argue that Co’s revelation threatens to undermine the integrity of the budget process itself.
If what he describes is accurate, it risks transforming Congress’s power of the purse into a rubber stamp for the executive branch, particularly at the expense of transparency and good governance. The exclusion of Romualdez, the President’s cousin, from impending legal measures has added fuel to speculation that proximity to the presidency may offer a shield against accountability.
Co’s legal team, however, has pushed back. His lawyer, Ruy Rondain, has dismissed many of the corruption claims as “hearsay” and argues that Co has not yet been charged in court.
According to Rondain, not every insertion is inherently illegal; it becomes problematic only if the funds are not carried out or are misused. And to date, Rondain insists, there is no definitive proof of criminal conduct.
Politics insiders suggest that all eyes will now shift to investigators to see whether Co’s confession will translate into formal charges, or whether this will be remembered as yet another high-stakes spectacle in the Marcos years.
If prosecutors decide to follow Co’s trail, they must reconstruct the paper trail, identify the inserted projects, and determine who ultimately benefitted while wrestling with a web of political influence and conflicting narratives.
For the public, the central question remains: will this be a watershed moment in reform, or merely another chapter in the Philippines’ long saga of budget controversies, where powerful names are mentioned but few truly answer for them?
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