Question: Who had some of the biggest public works contracts in Mindanao during the Duterte regime?
Answer: A private company known as CLTG Builders. CLTG is incidentally the initials of Christian Lawrence Tesoro Go, who is more than a senator first elected during the Duterte era. He remained in an unofficial capacity as the then president’s executive assistant.
The company that CLTG Builders partnered with in five infrastructure projects in the Davao region was St. Gerrard Construction, owned by Curlee and Sarah Discaya.
The five contracts totaled PHP 816 million and were finalized in 2017.
Sen. Go claimed that he was not involved in the company bearing his initials, as it was actually being run by his father.
Despite his claim, various quarters are asking to investigate Go or at least compel him to give details about his family’s partnership with the Discaya company, which has since been blacklisted by the Department of Public Works and Highways.
Go isn’t the only lawmaker with ties to controversial contractors. Two other senators, Joel Villanueva and Francis Escudero, were found to also have ties to contractors that had been mentioned by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as among the 15 companies that bagged the biggest contracts, mostly for flood control projects.
Escudero has admitted being a close friend of Lawrence Lubiano, president of Centerways Construction and Development, Inc. Lubiano admitted during the ongoing House hearings on the flood control mess that he had donated PHP 30 million to the Senate campaign of Escudero in 2022.
Villanueva, meanwhile, declared that he had likewise received PHP 20 million from New San Jose Builders Inc. for his 2022 Senate campaign.
Aside from the three senators, there are also 15 congressmen who have ties to contractors.
Rep. Zaldy Co is founder of Sunwest Construction and Development Corp., although he claims to have divested from the firm.
Before Co could be asked to testify on the controversy, he flew to the US last week, ostensibly for medical treatment. His staff would later say that he was actually having a checkup, which could be done in any of the top hospitals in the country.
Sen. Ping Lacson had stated during his privilege speech two weeks ago that no less than 36 lawmakers were contractors themselves.
Go, is a blood relative in the first degree and is directly connected to the contractors of large-scale construction firms. He also has a sibling who owns one such company.
With the two houses of the bicameral Congress both conducting investigations on the numerous failed or ghost flood control programs, legal experts have asked how they can hold fair and impartial hearings when senators and congressmen have themselves been implicated in the controversy.
Former senator and Justice secretary and now Rep. Leila de Lima, for one, had asked that same question prior to the start of the House hearings.
Legal circles have also cited the odd situation, leading President Marcos Jr. to declare that he was forming an independent commission to look into the controversial loss of as much as PHP 1 trillion in substandard and ghost projects in recent years.
During the Senate hearing, Sara Discaya admitted that her companies – the Discaya couple were found to own nine construction companies, often bidding for projects against each other – grew to their present size beginning in 2016.
This was, incidentally, at the first year of the Duterte administration.
In order to clean up the DPWH, Marcos Jr. accepted the resignation of Sec. Manuel Bonoan and appointed as its new head Vince Dizon, who was appointed to head the Transportation department less than a year ago.
