In The Godfather, Don Vito Corleone tells us: “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” In the Philippines, that offer comes in the form of padded budgets, ghost projects, and flood-control contracts. What Francis Ford Coppola filmed as fiction, Congress has perfected as practice: two Houses, two families, both running politics like a syndicate.
The House of Representatives looks less like a parliament than a crime family’s front. At least 17 lawmakers have been named in sworn testimony. Former Speaker Martin Romualdez — the “Don” of the chamber — has been forced to resign. Zaldy Co, reputed maestro of insertions, stands accused as the capo who knew how to carve the pie.
Like the Corleone olive oil company, everything has the veneer of legality. Bills are filed, budgets are debated. But behind the façade lies the real enterprise: kickbacks, commissions, and “insertions” offers nobody can refuse if they want projects to flow.
The Senate styled itself as the conscience of the nation, Michael Corleone at the baptism, pronouncing purity while ordering hits. But now, its own leaders are tainted: former Senate President Chiz Escudero, Majority Leader Joel Villanueva, and Pro Tempore Jinggoy Estrada.
The hearings resemble consigliere meetings more than oversight: senators interrogating contractors while carefully protecting their own skins. “Never tell anyone outside the family what you’re thinking,” Don Corleone warned. The Senate seems to have taken that advice literally.
Like a franchise film, the plot repeats:
- Denials: “It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.” Lawmakers thunder about lies and smears.
- Deflection: “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” Critics are painted as political opportunists.
- Sacrifice: expendable figures resign so the dons can survive. “This is the business we’ve chosen,” as Hyman Roth said in Godfather II.
The family business always finds a way to endure.
But this isn’t cinema. Every peso pocketed is a peso stolen from families waist-deep in water during every monsoon. Every ghost dike is a real barangay flooded. Every “insertion” is a subtraction from lives that need protecting.
The dons keep their villas dry while ordinary Filipinos lose their homes. In The Godfather, Michael consolidated power by leaving bodies in his wake. Here, the bodies are literal — farmers, children, and workers drowned in preventable floods.
And at the center stands Ferdinand Marcos Jr., whose presidency was supposed to cleanse his family’s name of dictatorship and plunder. But like Michael Corleone in the final scene: alone, trapped by the very empire he swore to control, Marcos risks becoming what he once denied. A leader preaching order, presiding over chaos. A president who promised stability, now drowning in scandal.
Congress today looks less like a check-and-balance system and more like a franchise family saga. Two houses, two families, both corrupted by scandal.
In The Godfather, the tragedy was that power always demanded a price: morality, family, even one’s soul. The tragedy for the Philippines is worse. Here, the price of corruption is paid not by the dons of Congress, but by the people: in floods, in ruins, and in broken trust.
And as Don Corleone said, “A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.” In our politics, it seems, a lawmaker who doesn’t feed off the family business can never be a real congressman.