No Merry Christmas, Indeed: How Marcos’s “War on Graft” Delivered One Lamb and Saved the Wolves

From 71% Hope to 59% Delusion: Filipinos Cling to Jail Dreams While Marcos’s Wolves Feast Freely

By Louis ‘Barok‘ C. Biraogo — January 12, 2026

MGA ka-kweba, picture this: a country that drowns every rainy season. Children float to school on plastic basins. Families watch their homes disappear under filthy water year after year. Then imagine pouring ₱545 billion — half a trillion pesos — into “flood control” projects, only to find that most of it built nothing except phantom dikes, invisible pumps, and the offshore accounts of a privileged few.

This is not tragedy.
This is theft.
Sophisticated, state-sanctioned, press-conference-smiling theft.

The Heist in Broad Daylight

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. himself cracked the door open in his 2025 SONA, bragging about 5,500 completed projects, then quietly ordering a review of nearly 10,000. What spilled out was a masterpiece of plunder:

₱100 billion — twenty percent of the entire budget — awarded to just fifteen contractors.
Kickbacks ranging from 20% to 70%.
Lawmakers inserting pet projects, DPWH engineers rubber-stamping “completed” works that existed only on paper, contractors like Cezarah “Sarah” Discaya and fugitive Zaldy Co delivering either nothing or instant-crumble garbage.

The “BGC Boys” — those luxury-SUV-riding, BGC-condo-owning contractors — allegedly ran the show, slicing the pie with politicians who treat the national treasury like their personal ATM.

Result? Ghost projects in a nation that literally drowns. Dikes that collapse at the first heavy rain. Pumps that never pumped. Billions gone while mothers in Marikina clutch children on rooftops and farmers in Pampanga watch entire harvests turn into lakes.

**“They promised us Noah’s Ark; we got the sacrificial lamb—seasoned with 20% SOP.”**

Marcos’s “No Merry Christmas” Farce

Enter Bongbong Marcos, infrastructure czar extraordinaire, thundering that the guilty would have “no Merry Christmas.” He named names, froze assets, vowed jail before year-end. The nation held its breath.

Then December passed. Exactly one contractor — Sarah Discaya — surrendered on December 9, offered up like a ritual lamb. The rest? Still enjoying lechon and fireworks, apparently.

To calm the rage — remember the September 21 protests that spooked Malacañang into coup rumors? — Marcos created the Independent Commission on Infrastructure (ICI). Sounds tough, right? Except the ICI has zero prosecutorial power. It can investigate, recommend, and write very stern reports. It cannot arrest, cannot indict, cannot do anything but soak up public anger like a cheap sponge.

Classic Philippine sleight-of-hand: when the people demand blood, hand them a committee.

Incompetence? Or calculation? Did Marcos truly think he could drain the swamp, only to find the swamp had permits, lawyers, and congressional patrons? Or did he decide early to manage the racket rather than end it — sacrifice a few minnows, shield the sharks, ride out the storm?

The Filipino people have already graded him: 48% distrust his handling of the scandal, versus a pathetic 30% who still trust him. That is an F in any school.

The National Psyche, Measured in Disappointment

Pulse Asia’s December 2025 survey captured the mood with brutal precision:

59% still believe the culprits will eventually go to jail — down 12 points from 71% in September.
That drop is not just numbers. It is broken promises made visible.
48% distrust Marcos on this issue.
54% trust the media most to get to the truth — higher than the Ombudsman (28%), the ICI (18%), Congress, or the President himself.

The Filipino people, battered by typhoons and lies, have rationally concluded that journalists — underpaid, overworked, sometimes threatened — are the last real investigators standing. That single fact should shame every official in Malacañang.

The Most Durable Infrastructure: Corruption

This scandal is not an anomaly. It is tradition.

PDAF. World Bank road cartels. Napoles. The names change, the playbook stays the same. Pork barrel was supposedly buried in 2013, yet lawmakers still insert projects, still pick contractors, still collect SOP. The architecture of theft stands taller and lasts longer than any dike we’ve ever built.

Our institutions?
– Ombudsman: limping at 28% trust.
– ICI: newborn paper tiger at 18%.
– Justice system: only 44% believe it can prosecute high-level graft.

We know why. Cases drag for decades. Evidence vanishes. Witnesses recant. The powerful walk free with a wink.

Enough. Time to Plug the Real Leak.

If we want actual flood control, we must first stop the hemorrhage in the treasury.

Immediate Demands:

Total Transparency
Publish — unredacted — all 9,800 project documents, bids, inspection reports, disbursement records. Post them online tomorrow. No more “ongoing investigation” excuses.
Dismantle Legalized Theft
- Re-criminalize pork barrel in every form. Make it explicitly illegal for legislators to insert, designate, or control infrastructure funds. Seal every loophole that resurrected PDAF.
- Abolish all shadow budgets: Unprogrammed Appropriations, MPBF, Contingent Fund, MAIFIP — any fund that escapes proper scrutiny.
- Dissolve the toothless ICI.
- Strengthen Ombudsman and COA with independent budgets, ironclad tenure, and real prosecutorial power.
Real Justice, Not Theater
Prosecute everyone — contractors, engineers, lawmakers, fixers — without fear or favor. Recover every stolen peso. Garnish mansions, yachts, trust funds if necessary.

Because every peso looted was a dike not built, a pump not bought, a family left to drown. While the BGC Boys sipped champagne, children died in floodwaters. While politicians counted kickbacks, farmers lost everything.

That 59% who still cling to hope that justice might come? That is fragile, desperate faith in the rule of law. Let us turn it into unbreakable fury.

True flood control begins not with concrete, but with courage.
It begins when we finally build a government that serves the people instead of devouring them.

Hanggang kailan ba tayo magtitiis?

Rise. Demand. Refuse to drown in their corruption.

–Barok