What the ICI is actually good for

By Michael Henry Yusingco, LL.M

When President Bongbong Marcos thundered “Mahiya naman kayo!” in his fourth State of the Nation Address, he stirred a simmering rage against corruption that cuts across class and political affiliation. The creation of the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) soon after was meant to signal that his outburst was not just polemic against our political villains. It was presented as the opening salvo in a campaign to dismantle a deeply entrenched corruption syndicate within government.

Yet months later, the ICI risks being remembered less as a turning point and more as an unfinished gesture. Investigations were conducted largely behind closed doors. Findings have not been made public. And while whispers of irregularities have circulated, taxpayers—the very people whose money funded both the corrupt projects and the investigations—remain in the dark. This opacity has fuelled a predictable but dangerous suspicion: that the ICI is little more than a smokescreen designed to shield allies.

That perception, fair or not, is corrosive. It undermines public trust not only in the investigation but in President Marcos’s broader anti-corruption narrative. Civil society must therefore resist the temptation to treat the work of the ICI as mission accomplished. It was never meant to be an endpoint. It was supposed to be the beginning of a sustained institutional clean-up. That mission is far from over, and the administration must do far more if it hopes to placate the public’s anger towards President Marcos himself.

At the top of the to-do list is a simple but politically difficult step: publish the ICI reports. Without public disclosure, the investigation’s credibility remains permanently in question. Opening the reports to scrutiny would allow journalists, watchdog groups, and ordinary citizens to assess whether the findings are substantive, whether recommendations are being acted upon, and whether any powerful figures were quietly spared. Notably, the big fish of the pork barrel cartel are yet to be arrested and detained.

There is another, less discussed reason why the ICI findings should be made public: they are indispensable to the effective implementation of the Government Optimization Act. This law grants President Marcos broad authority to reorganize, streamline, and recalibrate executive agencies. But optimization cannot be done in the dark. It requires a clear map of where corruption festers, where procedures are manipulated, and where overlapping mandates create opportunities for rent-seeking.

This is precisely the kind of institutional vulnerability that the ICI was tasked to uncover. Recall that the ICI was mandated to investigate anomalies and misuse of funds in the planning, financing, and implementation of flood control and other infrastructure projects nationwide. In the course of that work, it presumably identified choke points, loopholes, and structural weaknesses within the bureaucracy. If those findings remain hidden, the President is effectively depriving himself—and the public—of the most valuable diagnostic tool available for reform.

Publishing the ICI reports would allow civil society, policy experts, and even reform-minded bureaucrats to participate in identifying which agencies need restructuring, which programs should be phased out, and which functions should be transferred or consolidated. Optimization, in other words, becomes a collaborative national project rather than a top-down administrative exercise.

The Department of Justice and the Office of the Ombudsman can continue to use ICI findings to build cases against the pork barrel cartel. But President Marcos’s separate and equally important duty is to prevent future corruption by redesigning the system that made it possible in the first place. Government optimization is not about punishing individuals; it is about removing the structural incentives and administrative chaos that allow corruption to thrive.

Outgoing administrations usually avoid politically risky decisions and focus instead on legacy management. President Marcos cannot be this way if he wants his anti-corruption campaign to be remembered as more than just a slogan. The authority under the Government Optimization Act is time-bound by the reality of his tenure. Failing to use it decisively would amount to a self-inflicted squandered opportunity.