‘Truly shameful’: mass protests in Philippines as fury mounts over corruption

Thousands of Filipinos gathered on Sunday in Manila to express their anger over a ballooning scandal involving bogus flood-control projects believed to have cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

Rage over the so-called ghost infrastructure projects has been mounting in the Southeast Asian country since President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr put them centre stage in a July state of the nation address that followed weeks of deadly flooding.

On Monday, Marcos said he did not blame people for protesting “one bit” while calling for demonstrations to remain peaceful. The army has been placed on “red alert” as a precaution.

“There were times I personally waded through floods,” Aly Villahermosa, a 23-year-old nursing student from Metro Manila said as an estimated crowd of 13,000 gathered on Sunday morning in the capital’s Luneta Park.

“If there’s a budget for ghost projects, then why is there no budget for the health sector?” she said, calling the theft of public funds “truly shameful”.

Teddy Casino, 56, chairman of left-wing alliance Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, said the group was demanding not only the return of stolen funds but prison time for those involved.

“Corruption requires people to go to the streets and express their outrage in the hope of pressuring government to actually do their jobs,” he said.