Philippines ministers resign as flood scandal reaches presidential palace

Two members of the cabinet of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. resigned on Tuesday after being implicated in a “ghost” infrastructure investigation and missing billions of dollars, furthering the country’s government’s crisis in the wake of the corruption scandal.

According to presidential palace press secretary Claire Castro, executive secretary Lucas Bersamin and department of budget and management secretary Amenah Pangandaman have both resigned from their positions.

According to The Philippines Inquirer newspaper, Castro claimed that the pair made the decision to step down “in recognition of the responsibility to allow the administration to address the matter appropriately.”

According to Aries Arugay, a senior fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute and a top-ranking member of the Marcos government, Bersamin and Pangandaman are the only two who have been directly affected by the corruption scandal since it began in July.

Arugay claimed that this could change at any time, but Marcos has managed to stay out of the fray.

The palace is currently attempting to remove the president from this, and the budget secretary and executive secretary have both resigned. They are the ones who accept command of this, he told Al Jazeera.

Due to the continued support of many MPs for Marcos Jr. in the legislature under Vice President Sara Duterte, Arugay claimed, “all bets are off” in the event of more data.

Although the allegations have not been verified, politician Zaldy Co, who is currently not in the Philippines, claimed that Marcos ordered him to add $1.7 billion to the budget for “dubious public works” while he was the chairman of an appropriations committee.

According to The Philippines Inquirer, Co was one of the first group of government officials to face charges this week for their role in the corruption scandal following a month-long investigation.

Since Marcos Jr. revealed in a speech to Congress earlier this year that billions of dollars spent on public projects to build substandard infrastructure had been squandered by private contractors to create none at all, the scandal has swept the Philippines under the carpet.

Typhoons and other tropical storms frequently strike the Philippines, and flooding is still a problem that is persistent and frequently fatal.