DPWH Invents Ctrl+C Corruption: Same Road, 47 Different Kickbacks

Because Why Build One Road When You Can Bill the Country for Forty-Seven?

By Louis ‘Barok‘ C. Biraogo — November 27, 2025

The Greatest Copy-Paste Heist in Philippine History

Mga ka-kweba, ladies and gentlemen of this gloriously corrupt archipelago, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) has officially gone full Photoshop. They didn’t just steal public money this time — they duplicated it. Same road. Same flood control. Same imaginary school building. Different budget line, different amount, different congressman getting a kickback. It’s not incompetence. It’s performance art with a ₱700-billion budget.

**Road so nice they billed us thrice…×16.**

“Mostly Congressional Po” – The Official Battle Cry of Every Philippine Scandal Since 1986

Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson stood up in the Senate and basically called the entire DPWH budget a criminal enterprise disguised as infrastructure planning. His exact words: these duplicate projects are “designed to confuse and corrupt.” The response from budget sponsor Senator Sherwin Gatchalian? A shrug so epic it deserves its own statue in the Senate lobby. “Mostly congressional po.” Translation: Congress raped the National Expenditure Program (NEP), and the DPWH just held the victim down. And when asked how these identical projects with zero technical descriptions actually get implemented? “Discretion of the district engineer po.” Ah yes. Discretion. That magical loophole that turns ₱500 billion into somebody’s third yacht.

The Numbers That Should Make You Want to Set Fires

2024: Convergence and Special Support Program (CSSP) starts at ₱174 billion (NEP) → balloons to ₱410 billion (General Appropriations Act or GAA)
2025: ₱221 billion → ₱504 billion (more than doubled, because why not?)
2026: Already on its way to ₱234 billion in the House version and climbing

That’s ₱700+ billion in two years that grew extra limbs the moment legislators started “inserting.”

Same Project, New Name, Same Kickback – A Love Story

Same title. Same “Phase 1 / Phase 2 / Phase 27” nonsense. Same missing station IDs. Same ghostly projects that exist only on paper and in offshore bank accounts. Lacson found identical items under “Basic Infrastructure Program” and “Sustainable Infrastructure Projects Alleviating Gaps” — different amounts, same fairy tale. This isn’t bookkeeping error. This is money-laundering with line-item budgeting.

The Legal Edition: Why Nobody Will Ever Go to Jail for This

Yes, we have laws. Gorgeous, photogenic laws:

Republic Act No. 3019 (Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act) Section 3(e) – causing undue injury through manifest partiality or gross negligence
Revised Penal Code Article 171 – falsification by public officer (perfect for fake accomplishment reports)
Republic Act No. 6770 (The Ombudsman Act of 1989) – gives the Ombudsman power to investigate… in theory

Reality: the Supreme Court has ruled approximately 9,847 times that procurement violations alone do not equal automatic graft. You need to prove bad faith. You need a smoking gun. And the smoking gun was shredded, burned, and flushed down the Senate comfort room in 2023. So we get administrative cases → six-month suspension → full backpay → early retirement → beachfront property in Amanpulo.

The Barok Manifesto – Because Wishing Won’t Fix This Shit

Here’s what we actually need, yesterday:

Unique Project ID or GTFO – Every single infrastructure item gets a permanent ID with GPS coordinates and station limits. No ID = no money. Period.
Congressional Insertions Must Come with Full Engineering Docs – Or the insertion is void *ab initio*. Cry harder.
COA Gets “Kill Switch” Power – Any line item without technical description = automatic fund freeze.
Real-Time Public Registry – Let every journalist, vlogger, and angry taxpayer see exactly where the money is supposed to go.
Automatic Ombudsman Probe for Duplicates – No need for a formal complaint. Flag it → investigate it → jail them.

Will any of this happen? Of course not. By 2027 the budget will have triplicate projects and a new “AI-generated infrastructure” line item. Welcome to the Philippines. Where the budget is made up and the roads don’t matter.

— Barok

(Still waiting for the revolution)