What the Cayetano-Marcoleta hearing achieved was not accountability for flood control theft. It was a public attack on some of the Philippines’ most prominent human rights defenders.
MANILA — On Thursday, a group of men identifying themselves as former Marines — some of whom the Navy confirmed never served at all — were given a sworn platform before television cameras in the Philippine Senate to accuse a prize-winning priest who buries drug war victims, a lawmaker who spent nearly seven years in prison for opposing extrajudicial killings, and former left-wing legislators who championed the rights of the poor of receiving cash kickbacks from flood control projects.
The allegations collapsed under basic scrutiny: the accused either held no office during the period in question, had no access to infrastructure funds, or were named through what their accusers later admitted were mistakes. What the hearing achieved was not accountability for flood control theft. It was a public attack on some of the Philippines’ most prominent human rights defenders.
The hearing on June 4, convened by a minority Cayetano bloc at the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee in defiance of the newly reorganized majority, gave the 18 individuals a sworn platform before television cameras to accuse Rep. Leila de Lima, Fr. Flaviano “Flavie” Villanueva, and former members of the Makabayan bloc — among dozens of others — of having received cash payments linked to the alleged plunder of roughly 80 billion pesos in state flood control funds between 2022 and 2025.
The witnesses claimed they had served as couriers delivering suitcases filled with cash to politicians and other personalities, with each suitcase allegedly containing between Php20 million and Php48 million. The hearing, led by Senator Rodante Marcoleta, drew criticism from political observers who noted Marcoleta did not bother to hide his antipathy for the accused, fielding leading questions at witnesses they described as security men of former Rep. Zaldy Co.
The problems with the testimony were immediate and glaring.
De Lima was not yet a congresswoman at the time she was allegedly meeting with Co. The same was true with Rep. Terry Ridon, who did not return to Congress until July 2025. When asked about de Lima’s inclusion, one of the former soldiers admitted her name may have been a mistake.
The former Makabayan bloc lawmakers, for their part, had categorically opposed the pork barrel fund and did not sponsor infrastructure projects, making it structurally impossible for them to have received kickbacks from flood control allocations.
Two of the retired Marines even alleged that senators Tito Sotto and Erwin Tulfo — who were not in the upper chamber from 2022 to 2025 — had also received kickbacks.
The allegations against Fr. Villanueva appeared especially disconnected from plausible motive. The soldiers claimed he was chosen by former senator Antonio Trillanes IV to speak with officials of the International Criminal Court, which they alleged was unlawful. That framing — casting his cooperation with an international accountability body as grounds for suspicion — underscored what critics say is the real thrust of the operation.
Villanueva told LiCAS News the accusations were “plain lunacy” and “completely detached from reality.” He said he could not think of a word strong enough to describe what he called the “drama” and “script” unfolding in the Senate.
“Asian Nobel” Laureate
Fr. Villanueva, 55, is not an easy target to smear on the merits of his life’s work. Once bedeviled by his own drug addiction, he spent much of his adolescence battling self-doubt before founding the Kalinga Center in 2015 to serve the homeless and the poor. A year later, he established Program Paghilom (Healing), which has since helped more than 300 families whose loved ones were among the thousands killed in the Duterte drug war. Nearly 400 families now receive counseling, scholarships for children, and livelihood support for mothers through the program.
Among Paghilom’s most visible expressions is the Dambana ng Paghilom — the Shrine of Healing — at La Loma Cemetery in Caloocan City, a memorial columbarium built for victims of extrajudicial killings whose families could not afford proper burials. The program assists families through exhumations, forensic autopsies, cremation, and inurnment, all free of charge.
In August 2025, the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation named Villanueva one of three recipients of the prize — often called Asia’s Nobel — recognizing his Paghilom program for guiding widows and orphans of drug war victims through healing and empowerment. His efforts to seek justice for victims of extrajudicial killings had already made him a target of criticism, hate, and death threats. He was charged with sedition in 2021 but was acquitted two years later.
Cruelly Familiar
For de Lima, the accusations on Thursday were a cruelly familiar shape. As chair of the Commission on Human Rights, she had conducted inquiries between 2008 and 2010 into killings allegedly perpetrated by the so-called Davao Death Squad in the city of Davao, whose mayor at the time was Rodrigo Duterte. When Duterte became president and launched his war on drugs, she opened a Senate investigation into the resulting killings. Duterte and his allies responded with a year-long smear campaign against her — legislators blocked her committee’s investigation and instead launched an inquiry into her alleged romantic affairs, even threatening to make public a purported sex video — before her arrest in February 2017 on drug trafficking charges her supporters called fabricated.
She spent nearly seven years in detention. Amnesty International, alongside many other domestic and international organizations, repeatedly said the charges against her were fabricated and that the testimonies of witnesses against her were manufactured. She was granted bail in November 2023 and fully and finally cleared of all charges by mid-2025, when a lower court reaffirmed her acquittal after an appellate challenge. She won a seat in the House of Representatives in the May 2025 elections.
On Thursday, de Lima said: “I was unjustly detained on trumped-up, politically motivated, fabricated illegal drug trading charges, and now you’re doing this again to make it appear that I am corrupt and accepting bribes.” She had already filed libel and perjury complaints against lawyer Levito Baligod and the 18 ex-Marines in connection with the earlier February allegations from which the Senate hearing drew.
Baligod had previously admitted committing an “oversight” in listing de Lima as among those allegedly receiving suitcases of cash, then revised his account to claim she had received a paper bag instead. De Lima was direct: “Whether in a suitcase, a paper bag, or any container, I never received any money.”
Both she and Villanueva pointed to the timing of the allegations as telling. De Lima noted the accusations surfaced amid the impeachment proceedings against the vice president and just after the International Criminal Court concluded its confirmation of charges hearing against Duterte. “It could only be the handiwork of the Duterte camp,” she said, citing former senator Antonio Trillanes.
Most Persistent
The former Makabayan bloc members named in the testimony — France Castro of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers, Arlene Brosas of Gabriela, and Raoul Manuel of Kabataan — served as among the most persistent legislative voices on human rights during their combined decades in Congress.
The bloc filed versions of the Human Rights Defenders Protection Act, which sought to establish mechanisms to promote and protect the rights of human rights defenders in the Philippines, including protections against red-tagging — the practice of labeling activists as communist sympathizers, which rights groups say frequently precedes physical attacks. They also filed a resolution urging the Philippine government to cooperate with the ICC investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed during Duterte’s drug war. All three ran for the Senate in May 2025 and lost; Brosas and Castro are now private citizens, while their respective party-list groups continue in Congress under different representatives.
Castro, Brosas, and Manuel condemned the flood control allegations as “a desperate act of political demolition.” Their inclusion in the list, despite having left Congress and despite the structural impossibility of their involvement in infrastructure kickbacks, is consistent with a pattern human rights advocates say they have long observed: the use of formal proceedings to publicly discredit those who most aggressively challenge state impunity.
Probe Reopened
The National Bureau of Investigation announced it is reopening its probe into the 18 individuals after receiving information from a relative of one of the witnesses alleging that members of the group may have been paid in exchange for their testimony. The NBI subpoenaed former lawmaker Mike Defensor over allegations that he paid Php5 million to the 18 former Marines who testified before the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee.
The hearing itself was procedurally contested from the start. Tension erupted at the Senate premises when Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla allegedly tried to block entry of the so-called ex-Marines. Senator Pia Cayetano personally escorted them, along with Senate staff and members of the media, into the plenary hall. The majority bloc, led by Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, had declared the hearing suspended after the chamber reorganized the day before and reassigned the chairmanship of the Blue Ribbon Committee.
The underlying flood control scandal — involving allegations of massive theft from public infrastructure funds — remains a live and serious matter. But what unfolded on June 4 was a separate exercise: a hearing that appeared designed not to follow the money, but to punish those who have most consistently demanded accountability for human rights violations. (Rights Report Philippines)
