Police arrest 17 for hurling rocks as thousands peacefully protest corruption

Philippine police arrested 17 people — many dressed in black and wearing face masks — who set fire to the tires of a barricade truck and threw rocks at riot police securing a bridge and nearby roads leading to the presidential palace in Manila yesterday.

The brief but chaotic incident did not involve the thousands of protesters who joined two large, peaceful anti-corruption demonstrations that took place elsewhere in the capital.

The violence prompted a security lockdown in the nearby Malacanang presidential palace, where access roads were blocked by security forces.

It was not immediately clear if those arrested by police had also joined the peaceful protests where some 18,000 people rallied in a nearby national park in Manila and at a democracy shrine along the main EDSA national highway.

Police said in a statement after making the arrests that the situation was “contained” but warned that violence and vandalism would not be tolerated.

“We respect the public’s right to peaceful assembly, but we strongly appeal to everyone to remain calm and refrain from violence,” the police said.

Dozens of fellow protesters of those arrested by police, however, later ran to another road near the presidential palace and sprayed graffiti on walls and concrete posts. Some waved Philippine flags and displayed posters with anti-corruption slogans. Police responded with tear gas and made more arrests.

Protesting corruption

The thousands of peaceful protesters took to the streets to express their outrage over a corruption scandal involving lawmakers, officials and businesspeople who allegedly pocketed huge kickbacks from flood-control projects in the poverty-stricken and storm-prone Southeast Asian country.

“I feel bad that we wallow in poverty and we lose our homes, our lives and our future while they rake in a big fortune from our taxes that pay for their luxury cars, foreign trips and bigger corporate transactions,” student activist Althea Trinidad told The Associated Press in Manila.

Trinidad lives in Bulacan, a flood-prone province north of Manila where officials said the most flood-control projects were being investigated either as substandard or nonexistent.

“Our purpose is not to destabilize but to strengthen our democracy,” Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, the head of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, said in a statement. He called on the public to demonstrate peacefully and demand accountability.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. first highlighted the flood-control corruption scandal in July in his annual state of the nation speech.

He later established an independent commission to investigate what he said were anomalies in many of the 9,855 flood-control projects worth more than 545 billion pesos ($9.5 billion) that were supposed to have been undertaken since he took office in mid-2022. He called the scale of corruption “horrible” and accepted his public works secretary’s resignation.

Public outrage erupted when a wealthy couple who ran several construction companies that won lucrative flood-control project contracts showed dozens of European and American luxury cars they owned during media interviews. The fleet included a British luxury car costing 42 million pesos ($737,000) that they said they bought because it came with a free umbrella.

Under intense public criticism, the couple, Sarah and Pacifico Discaya, later identified during a televised Senate inquiry at least 17 House of Representatives legislators and public works officials who allegedly forced them to pay huge kickbacks so they could secure flood-control projects in an explosive testimony.

Two prominent senators were later implicated in the scandal in a separate House inquiry. All those named denied wrongdoing but they face multiple investigations.

Senate President Francis Escudero and House Speaker Martin Romualdez separately stepped down in the widening fallout from the scandal. JIM GOMEZ, MANILA, MDT/AP