For years, the Duterte machinery thrived on noise — a relentless storm of trolling that drowned out dissent and manufactured loyalty. But today, that once-deafening roar has been reduced to a whisper. Why? Because it has been swallowed whole by a flood — not of water, but of corruption — now engulfing both Congress and the executive branch, with the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) at its rotten core. The levees of impunity have finally burst, and the noise machine has nothing left to shield it.
The implosion of the Dutertes’ political base has been swift and brutal. In the Senate, their loyalists have been swept away: Chiz Escudero, Rodante Marcoleta, and Jinggoy Estrada were booted out as Senate President, Senate President Pro Tempore, and Majority Floor Leader, respectively. The once-feared DDS bloc in the House has shriveled into irrelevance, stripped of the clout that once let them bully committees into silence. The so-called kings of the chamber have been dethroned. Political extinction has a way of quieting even the loudest mouths.
Yet desperation breeds delusion. In a grotesque act of political necromancy, the remnants of the DDS are attempting a resurrection — trying to hijack an anti-corruption protest coinciding with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s birthday to relaunch their lost cause. The irony is obscene: these are the same forces that nurtured the very corruption now being exposed. They want to march against the monster they raised? The public isn’t fooled. The Dutertes’ popularity is plunging because this scandal isn’t just adjacent to them — it is their legacy. They cannot make noise now without indicting themselves.
Central to this reckoning is the spectacular collapse of the Discaya defense. Contractor Curlee Discaya, once floated as a key witness, saw his affidavit disintegrate under questioning. He claimed he only began bribing DPWH officials after a 2022 department order based on a law — but officials pointed out the law was passed in 2003 and the order issued in 2015. He even admitted people demanded bribes during the Duterte administration, but suspiciously excluded them from his affidavit. His story was a selective dam, built to divert blame away from Duterte’s years — and it has crumbled.
Even Senate President Vicente “Tito” Sotto III rejected the attempt to make Discaya and former presidential daughter Sara Duterte state witnesses, bluntly saying they were unqualified and their accounts “unbelievable.” It was an unmistakable message: the Senate will not launder Duterte fingerprints from this scandal. The cover-up collapsed before it could even begin.
And then comes the smoking gun: Davao City’s first congressional district, represented by Paolo “Polong” Duterte, bagged a staggering P51 billion in infrastructure funds during the final three years of his father’s presidency. DPWH Undersecretary Maria Catalina Cabral confirmed it — 12 multi-year contracts, the most in the country, at the height of a pandemic when most districts were scraping for scraps. Polong’s flippant defense — “Davao has nothing to hide” — insults public intelligence. Denials are not documentation. He must show proof that every peso was spent properly, and why his turf alone merited this deluge of privilege while his father sat in Malacañang.
Can the public truly believe claims of innocence from figures like Jinggoy Estrada and Joel Villanueva — men long shadowed by the Napoles pork barrel scandal — when they posture as anti-corruption crusaders today? Bad habits never die; they simply mutate.
The trolls built their empire on noise. Now, buried under their own flood of corruption, they are gasping for air. The silence is not strategy. It is surrender.
