MANILA: Tens of thousands of protesters returned to the streets of Manila for a second straight day on Monday, pressing their demands for accountability over alleged corruption in flood-mitigation projects.
The protest, which started on Sunday and drew over 600,000 people, will run until Tuesday. It is organized by Iglesia Ni Cristo, a 2-million-strong church known for bloc voting, which mobilized members nationwide.
Many in Sunday’s crowd expressed frustration at what they described as ineffective inquiries into irregularities in major infrastructure projects. “We are calling for the government to carry out a real, sincere, investigation and not cover up for anyone who are involved in this anomaly,” said 60-year-old Freddie Beley.
The scandal has widened since Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. disclosed in August the results of an internal audit into flood-control projects, revealing troubling irregularities.
It has implicated public works officials, executives of major construction firms, and lawmakers, who allegedly enriched themselves through substandard, or in some cases non-existent, flood-control projects. The controversy has hammered investor confidence and is seen by some analysts as a factor behind economic growth hitting a four-year low in the third quarter, as public spending slowed. Marcos has created a commission to investigate the alleged corruption in infrastructure projects, focusing on flood-control facilities. The president, son of a former leader accused of widespread corruption during his rule, has framed his crackdown as part of a broader push for accountability and transparency.
Protester Armelyn Bandril, 35, said there was a lack of accountability. “Almost a hundred days have passed since the process began, yet no one has been jailed. There’s plenty of proof,” she said. Marcos on Thursday vowed that those responsible for the flawed projects would be jailed before Christmas.
Thousands of anti-graft protesters take to streets of Philippines capital for second day
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Thousands of anti-graft protesters take to streets of Philippines capital for second day
- The protest, which started on Sunday and drew over 600,000 people, will run until Tuesday
- Frustration over ineffective inquiries into irregularities in major infrastructure projects
Italian general challenges Meloni from the right
- A career soldier with experience in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Vannacci shot to fame in 2023 with the publication of a controversial book, “The World Upside Down”
- Meloni’s party remains the most popular, polling at more than 29 percent support — more than it won in 2022 elections
ROME: A retired general who criticizes the EU, wants to send home illegal migrants and says Ukraine should accept a peace deal with Russia is challenging Italy’s hard-right government on its own turf.
Roberto Vannacci, 57, last month defected from the far-right League party, a partner in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s coalition government, and set up a new party he said is “proud of being right-wing.”
Opinion polls put the new “National Future” at around three percent support, most of it taken from the League, led by Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, but also Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy.
Meloni’s party remains the most popular, polling at more than 29 percent support — more than it won in 2022 elections.
But the general offers “the first movement emerging on the right that isn’t aligned with the three main parties,” Lorenzo Castellani, professor of politics at Rome’s Luiss University, said.
A career soldier with experience in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Vannacci shot to fame in 2023 with the publication of a controversial book, “The World Upside Down.”
In it, he complained about a “dictatorship of minorities,” while saying Italian star volleyball player Paola Egonu, who is black, had features that “do not represent Italian-ness.”
He was suspended from his army job, with Defense Minister Guido Crosetto — a member of Meloni’s party — saying that his “personal ramblings ... discredit the army, the Defense Ministry and the constitution.”
But in the end, he was allowed to retire, and the controversy made him a celebrity on the far right.
Salvini, whose anti-immigration League has been losing ground to Meloni’s in recent years, invited him into his party and Vannacci was elected to the European Parliament in 2024.
But last month the ex-general struck out on his own, taking with him two League MPs and another who was independent but formerly in Meloni’s party.
He is targeting voters disenchanted with Salvini and also Meloni, who has radical far-right roots but in office has taken a more pragmatic approach.
National Future is “a party of the true right, pure, sincere, proud, unashamed of being right-wing,” and “not hesitant, not fearful,” Vannacci told the foreign press association Thursday.
Once a firebrand euroskeptic, Meloni has worked closely with the EU in office, while her flagship promise to cut illegal immigration has been tempered by a major boost in visas for legal migrants.
Vannacci has “a more extremist approach to issues like immigration, like security, where he explicitly talks about remigration,” Castellani said.
The ex-general highlights Italy’s Roman-Christian roots and has called for migrants to be returned to their countries of origin if they arrived illegally or committed a crime.
While Meloni has distanced herself from Italy’s Fascist past, Vannacci was accused of revisionism last year after a social media post defending the democratic credentials of dictator Benito Mussolini.
National sovereignty, meanwhile, is a priority, with Vannacci lambasting the EU as both overreaching member states’ rights and globally ineffective — not least in the current wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.
