(L-R) House of Representatives Sara Elago, Antonio Tinio and Louise Co show the documents as endorsers of the impeachment complaint against Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos at the House of Representatives in Quezon City, suburban Manila on January 22, 2026. (Photo by TED ALJIBE / AFP)
Members of Philippine civil society groups filed an impeachment complaint against President Ferdinand Marcos Thursday, accusing him of systematically bilking taxpayers out of billions of dollars for bogus flood control projects.
Rage over so-called ghost infrastructure projects has been building for months in the archipelago country of 116 million, where entire towns were buried in floodwaters driven by powerful typhoons in the past year.
Thursday’s filing, endorsed by the Makabayan bloc, a coalition of left-wing political parties, accuses Marcos of betraying the public trust by packing the national budget with projects aimed at redirecting funds to allies.
"The President institutionalized a mechanism to siphon over $9.2 billion in flood control funds, directing them into the hands of favored cronies and contractors and converting public coffers into a private war chest for the 2025 [mid-term] elections," a summary of the filing seen by AFP says.
It also accuses the president of directly soliciting kickbacks, a charge that relies heavily on unproven allegations made by a former congressman who fled the country while under investigation.
Marcos has consistently noted that he was the one who put the issue of ghost projects center stage and taken credit for pushing investigations that have seen scores of construction firm owners, government officials and lawmakers implicated.
