SEN. Imee Marcos on Wednesday called for a wider, evidence-driven investigation into alleged irregularities in government flood control projects as she stressed that accountability should proceed regardless of political affiliation or personal ties.
Investigators must pursue the truth wherever the evidence leads, even if it involves allies or relatives, she said at the Pandesal Forum hosted by newspaper columnist and Kamuning Bakery and Café owner Wilson Lee Flores.
“If it’s my relative, my cousin, my sibling, my nephew, then so be it — we can’t do anything about it. We really have to follow the evidence,” she said, emphasizing that no one should be exempt from scrutiny.
Stressing that the focus should be on identifying those who allegedly ordered the projects rather than limiting responsibility to implementers, the eldest sister of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said the public deserves clarity on long-standing allegations involving infrastructure funds.
“It’s not right that it’s only junior officials, contractors, and others who are being pointed to as merely following orders. Who gave the orders? That is what we really need to get to,” the senator said.
Marcos also defended Senate discussions on the possible remote participation of senators in impeachment proceedings, saying the chamber has the constitutional authority to set its own rules for impeachment trials.
She clarified that no final decision had been reached when tensions escalated inside the Senate.
“They haven’t even discussed the details yet — what remote participation means, what the voting process will be, what the participation setup is. None of that has been defined yet,” Marcos said.
She said procedural discussions should not be misinterpreted as attempts to derail the impeachment process, rejecting claims that Senate actions on impeachment were being used as a diversion from other national issues.
“It is not a diversionary tactic. We were all focused on it,” she said, insisting that senators had been actively preparing for the proceedings.
She said the Senate had been waiting for the formal transmission of the Articles of Impeachment before fully moving forward.
“We were discussing what to do about the impeachment to make it transparent, clear, fast, and orderly,” Marcos said. “We were really looking forward to tackling it,” she said.
She argued that the Senate’s reputation was being damaged not by dissenting senators but by alleged cover-ups, political maneuvering, and the continued politicization of national issues.
