Philippines Cabinet Shake-Up Deepens Marcos Jr’s Corruption Crisis

Two of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s top officials abruptly quit on Tuesday after being pulled into a widening “ghost projects” probe that has already exposed billions of dollars in vanished public funds, and is now inching closer to the president’s inner circle.

Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin and Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman both stepped down, the presidential palace confirmed. Press officer Claire Castro said the pair chose to resign “after their departments were mentioned in allegations related to the flood control anomaly” and “in recognition of the responsibility to allow the administration to address the matter appropriately.”

Their exit marks the highest-level fallout since the scandal erupted in July, a point not lost on political analyst Aries Arugay, who told Al Jazeera that the two officials are essentially absorbing the blast radius for now. “At the moment, the palace is trying to take the president out of this, and this is why you have the ‘resignations’ of the executive secretary, the budget secretary. They’re the ones accepting command responsibility over this,” he said.

Marcos, at least publicly, remains above water. But Arugay’s warning is blunt: that buoyancy may not last. Despite a still-“comfortable” legislative majority, largely because lawmakers prefer him over the alternative of Vice President Sara Duterte, “all bets are off” if stronger evidence surfaces.

And there’s fresh smoke already. Earlier this week, politician Zaldy Co, currently outside the country, alleged that Marcos personally instructed him to pad the budget with $1.7bn for “dubious public works” while Co led an appropriations committee. The claims, reported by the South China Morning Post, remain unverified. Co has since been among the first officials formally charged after a months-long investigation, Philippine media reported.

The scandal traces back to Marcos Jr’s own admission before Congress: that vast sums earmarked for anti-flooding projects were siphoned off by private contractors who delivered shoddy work, or, in some cases, nothing at all. In a country pummeled annually by typhoons and deadly floods, the revelation hit a nerve.