INDEPENDENT Navotas City Rep. Toby Tiangco has reminded his colleagues that “the biggest budget and infrastructure scandal” that linked ex-House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez and former Ako Bicol congressman Zaldy Co must first be resolved before shifting to another political move like the filing an impeachment complaint against Vice President Sara Duterte.
Tiangco then urged them to first clean up the ranks to have the moral authority in any impeachment proceedings.
“Let’s first look at ourselves in the mirror before we judge others. How can the defenders of Martin Romualdez and Zaldy Co possess the moral authority if they were either part of the irregularities or silent against anomalies at the House?”
“It’s humiliating that many are calling us to be coming from the ‘House of Crocodiles’ (an idiom in reference to corrupt government people),” Tiangco said.
The former long-time mayor-turned lawmaker stressed that he’s totally for accountability.
“But let’s not be hypocrites here. Let’s not throw dirt to others just to come up clean,” said Tiangco as he clarified that he’s not putting up conditions for his involvement in impeachment complaints.
Rather, he said he was only highlighting the need to ensure that those involved in the biggest budget and infrastructure scandal in Philippine history are held accountable and that the issue would not be relegated to the back burner.
Tiangco lamented the fact that since Rep. Faustino Dy III replaced Romualdez as the top House leader, only one major leadership position has changed and all other leadership positions under the latter have been retained.
He urged his colleagues to speak out about the anomalies in the House to gain the moral ascendancy in the impeachment proceedings.
They (House colleagues) should first come out and reveal what they knew “to hold this big fish like Co who was the brain behind the anomalous budget allocations under the General Appropriations Act and flood control scam,” he said.
“It would be totally insulting if only the small fish – the small players – would be sacrificed and held accountable,” Tiangco pointed out.
