Philippine president supports public outrage over corruption but says protests should be peaceful

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MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippine president on Monday encouraged the public to express their outrage over massive corruption that has plagued flood-control projects in one of Asia’s most typhoon-prone countries but said street protests should be peaceful.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. vowed that an investigation by an independent commission would not spare even his allies in the House of Representatives and the Senate, where several legislators have been identified and accused in televised congressional hearings of pocketing huge kickbacks, along with government engineers and construction companies. Marcos first spoke about the corruption scandal in July in his annual state of the nation speech.

Unlike recent violent protests in Nepal and Indonesia, street rallies against alleged abuses in the Philippines have been smaller and relatively peaceful. Outrage has largely been vented online, including by Catholic church leaders, business executives and retired generals.

A planned protest on Sept. 21 in a pro-democracy shrine in the Manila metropolis near guarded upscale neighborhoods, where some of the corruption suspects live in affluence, is expected to draw a larger crowd. Police forces and troops have been placed on alert.

“If I wasn’t president, I might be out in the streets with them,” Marcos said of anti-corruption protesters.

“Of course they are enraged, of course they are angry, I’m angry," Marcos added, calling on the protesters to demand accountability. “You let them know your sentiments, you let them know how they hurt you, how they stole from you, shout at them and do everything, demonstrate, just keep it peaceful.”

But Communications Undersecretary Claire Castro said over the weekend that “people who have ill intentions and want to destabilize the government" should not exploit the public's outrage.

Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, Jr. and military chief of staff Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. issued a joint statement late Friday rejecting a call for the country’s armed forces to withdraw support from Marcos in response to public outrage over the corruption scandal. They did not elaborate, but underscored that the 160,000-member military was non-partisan, professional and “abides by the constitution through the chain-of-command.”

During a recent rally, a speaker called on the military to end its loyalty to Marcos and called on Filipinos to stage a non-violent “people power” revolt similar to army-backed uprisings that ousted Ferdinand Marcos, the current president’s late father and namesake, in 1986 and Joseph Estrada in 2001.

The House of Representatives and the Senate have been investigating alleged substandard and non-existent flood-control projects in separate televised inquiries. Dozens of legislators, senators, construction companies and public works engineers have been identified and accused of pocketing huge kickbacks that financed lavish lifestyles with mansions, European luxury cars and high-stakes casino gambling in a country still wracked by poverty.

The Philippines has spent an estimated 545 billion pesos ($9.6 billion) for thousands of flood mitigation projects in the last three years alone. The projects were under government review to determine which ones are substandard or non-existent, as Marcos said he found during recent inspections in some flood-prone areas, including in Bulacan, a densely populated province north of Manila.