Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do — American writer Dale Carnegie
MAYPAJO, Caloocan City — Revelations on kickbacks on the anomalous flood control project of the Department of Public Works involving erstwhile House Speaker Martin Romualdez is so damning that, literally, President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. (PBBM)’s cousin appears to be ‘a dead man walking’ among his peers in the Lower House.
And the corruption allegation against Romualdez (including Ako Bicol party-list representative Elizaldy ‘Zaldy’ Co) did not come from anonymous leaks or financial documents hidden in some banker’s drawer—it came from the testimony of a soldier, Marine Master Sgt. Orly Regala Guteza, a man trained to defend the Republic but who found himself conscripted into the sordid duty of delivering bags of dirty cash to the former House leader’s posh residence on No. 42 McKinley Road right in front of a church in the exclusive village of Forbes Park.
The fact is, a huge truck has been seen at the said mansion about to ‘evacuate’ some things to an unknown destination. Hey, is PBBM’s cousin about to go abroad, too, like his buddy Zaldy Co?
Still, it’s really poetic justice that a delivery man, the kind whom the high-and mighty Martin Romualdez may have ignored as ‘a little man (maliit na tao)’, will be bringing to ruin the second most powerful man in the country.
For us here in the Chronicle, Guteza is more credible than the public works officials who accused senators Jose ‘Jinggoy Estrada’ Ejercito Jr. and evangelist Eddie Villanueva son Emmanuel Joel ‘Tesdaman’ Villanueva and former senators Maria Lourdes Nancy Binay-Angeles and Ramon ‘Bong’ Revilla Jr. of receiving blood money from the substandard and ‘ghost’ flood control projects.
As is the case, the dirty money was moved through layers: bagmen, go-betweens, corporate layers because this chain provides cover, keeping Romualdez’s hands clean while underlings absorbed the risk. In Guteza’s account, in December 2024, he and his comrades delivered 46 suitcases containing an average amount of ₱48 million first to Congressman Co’s house, where they left behind 11 pieces of the luggages, and hence to the Speaker’s residence in Forbes Park for the relamaining 35.
Guteza confirmed the bags contained money because there was an instance some were opened to check their contents.
When he was still at the helm of the House leadership, Romualdez had selected Co as chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, with former Caloocan City’s District II representative Mary Mitzi ‘Mitch’ Cajayon-Uy—also implicated in the flood control—as vice chairman.
Co supervised and gave the go-ahead on behalf of Romualdez for the countrywide hijacking of flood-control funds by his colleagues, officials of the DPWH and even several senators. For that, Zaldy shared in the loot.
But PPBM’s cousin has galvanized into action his vaunted, well-paid public relations (PR) machine (led by Ryan and Ruben) and it us now claiming that such deliveries as told by Guteza were well-nigh impossible as his Forbes Park residence was being renovated on the days of the alleged deliveries.
Romualdez thinks Filipinos are stupid. The Speaker’s residence is not just some middle-class residence whose entrance is restricted while it is being renovated. His 42 McKinley Road residence in Forbes Park is a 4,000-sq-m mansion with not a few entrances, several for guests and two for staff. Even Romualdez has not claimed his other residence, where the dirty money was delivered, at 19 Narra Street, which was being renovated at the time.
What bolsters Sgt. Guteza’s testimony is his disclosure that his team also delivered a number of luggages to what he claimed was also Romualdez’s house on Aguado Street near Malacañan Palace.
This house was well-known in political circles during the Marcos dictatorship as the ‘Little DFA (Department of Foreign Affairs)’ where Martin’s father and Imelda Marcos’ brother, Benjamin ‘Kokoy’ Romualdez, the Philippine ambassador to the US, lived or had spent most of their working hours, just a stone’s throw from President Ferdinand E. Marcos’ office and residence.
Martin wanted to copy his father’s wont and has somehow managed to occupy (or even own) the Aguado house, where he stayed often and met with congressmen and other high-ranking officials. No way Guteza would have thought of inventing the narrative that he and his team had delivered the dirty money there if that did not happen.
Guteza would have little credibility if he were just a private security guard contracted to deliver the luggage. It would have been easy for the opposition to get someone from the street and lie to put Romualdez down, and if the scheme fell through, could easily have been asked to disappear into some distant province.
But Guteza is a Marine master sergeant, an enlisted man who worked and fought in firefights with communists and Muslim jihadists.
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