Cathy Cabral’s revenge

Until the authorities prove there was foul play, I have no trouble believing that Cathy Cabral took her own life, threw herself down that Kennon Road ravine, in a final and deliberate act of defiance. She must have sensed by then that “due process” would could not work in her favor unless she turned state witness, but she hadn’t been asked, was not being considered, and she may have seen signs indicating that as usual, babae lang ang makukulong — she was likely to spend the rest of her life in jail, her family’s funds and assets frozen.

That her boss under PBBM was allowed to leave but did not return on the 17th as promised, that her boss under PRRD has been silent as a sphinx, must have told her in no uncertain terms that she was on her own. And I imagine that the pressure from senatongs and congtractors, in both Duterte and Marcos admins, to cover up for them, or else, must have been so intense it drove her angry enough to turn her back on it all, habang hindi pa siya nakakasuhan.

She was one bright lady, her CV impressive, the rare woman who made it in the macho world of infrastructure.

HEIDI MENDOZA. We can say, She’s among the best of career professionals. Despite the not so good ending, we cannot deny the long years of service she has rendered.

Nag-meet kami nung consultant pa ako sa World Bank at ADB. It’s a pleasure to work with her, magaling, committed at mabilis magtrabaho. Recipient din sya ng maraming awards, including the PRC Outstanding Professional with a solid academic and technical expertise !

What went wrong? https://www.facebook.com/

She was appointed DPWH Undersecretary, Planning and PPP (Public-Private Partnership) in 2014, and Senator Ping‘s data show that the budget started bloating with flood control projects (failed and ghost) in 2016. She must have known what her bosses were up to, and that she was helping facilitate corruption with her algorithmic formulas. I wonder if she wavered at first, or did she ever waver but decided to stay anyway? Bahala na? And when shit hit the fan and floods hit high and wide, did she have a sense of foreboding and start reflecting on her options, and her mortality?

Di naman nakakagulat ang conspiracy theories — nasundan sila, itinulak siya, para patahimikin forever about kickbacks in billions of bucks — given what and who she knows. Pero nakakaloka ang questions like: but she’s afraid of heights, so what was she doing by that cliffside, unless she had been ordered to be there by some macho with evil designs?

My take is, instinctive naman ang fear of heights, and while Cabral’s may have been  pronounced enough for her to admit, it did not necessarily mean that it could would not be one of her options if she were thinking on how to commit suicide, esp if she wanted to leave certain clues behind. Sabi nga ni DILG Sec Jonvic Remulla, that Kennon Road site was familiar terrain to Cabral, she had been there before. Where she jumped was across the road from mountain slopes where rocknetting projects dating back to 2018-2019 were inspected by PBBM last August and which he declared overpriced and substandard, projects said to be attributed to two Congressmen, one of whom is said to now own the Baguio hotel where Cabral checked in.

Sabi nga sa Facebook, it’s like she left breadcrumbs behind, a la Hansel and Gretel, calling our attention to that failed rocknet project, sinong contractor, sinong proponent, sino-sinong tumanggap ng kickback, check out the Baguio hotel, too, find the connections, for starters. Hopefully, the ICI and the Ombudsman will be guided accordingly, too, as they navigate the murky waters of corruption.

What’s most curious, and telling, is the attitude that Cabral’s death is a death blow to anti-corruption efforts, as if everything had hinged on Cabral’s expected revelations on flood control projects over the last 10 years. You wonder then why they didn’t get to her sooner. Did they actually think that she would sit idly and meekly by, just hoping and praying that her bosses might own up to the command responsibility, after all, she was just following orders, or something like that?

Cathy Cabral was no ordinary woman. She knew that the odds were stacked against her. And rather than spend the rest of her life in prison and penury, I can believe she decided to simply end it. Sabay leave ng clues, and hopefully documents, ledgers, USBs, too — a kind of revenge on all these guys na nakinabang sa kanya but when push came to shove didn’t hesitate to throw her under the bus. Almost like a macho conspiracy. Sa dulo, siya pala ang pasasagasaan. F*ck-you-all nga naman. Manigas kayo.