Thousands of people gather in the Philippines during anti-corruption demonstrations in Manila | Corruption news

President Marcos said in July that there were anomalies in 9,855 flood control projects worth more than $ 9.5 billion.

Thousands of demonstrators gathered in the Philippine capital, Manila, got angry with a corruption scandal involving flood control projects that would have cost billions of dollars.

The organizers hoping to draw one of the greatest holdings of anti-corruption protests in the country on Sunday, the police and the troops were deposited to prevent any possible outbreak of violence.

There has been fatal violence in another southeast nation, in Indonesia, recently, where demonstrators, furious with police violence, parliamentarians’ salaries and arrow inflation, organized national demonstrations.

The demonstrators in Manila made a sign of the Philippines and held a banner which read “no more, too, by imprisoning”, while they were walking, demanding the pursuit of all the people involved.

“I feel bad that we are embarking on poverty and that we lose our homes, our lives and our future while they have repercussions in a great fortune of our taxes which pay their luxury cars, their foreign trips and their more important business transactions,” said student activist Althea Trinidad to the associated press agency.

“We want to go to a system where people will no longer be mistreated.”

According to the AFP news agency, around 13,000 people gathered in the Manila Luneta park on Sunday morning.

Anger has strengthened on the so-called ghost infrastructure projects since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr underlined the scandal in July during his annual speech on the state of the nation.

Marcos then established an independent commission to investigate what he called anomalies in numerous flood control projects of 9,855 which were worth more than 545 billion pesos ($ 9.5 billion).

Public indignation has worsened after a rich couple, Sarah and Pacifico Discaya, which operated several construction companies, won flood control contracts that showed dozens of European and American luxury cars and SUVs they owned.

Marcos said on Monday that he had not blamed people for protesting the scandal “a bit” and called peaceful demonstrations. The president added that the army was “red alert” as a precaution.

Reporting from Manila, Barnaby d’Al Jazeera, Lo, said that the demonstration was led by Christian churches of all denominations, but that the Catholic Church “historically” could “galvanize the Philippin people”.

“It is not a coincidence that these demonstrations occur on September 21, which is the anniversary of the martial law declaration by former president Ferdinand Marcos SR and takes place on the same road where the power revolutions of two people took place,” said LO.

LO added that the demonstrators want the president to institute “sustainable reforms” which “would eradicate any opportunity for corruption at any level of government”.

Aly Villahermosa, a 23 -year -old nursing student, told AFP that she had trained by floods in the country subject to storms.

“If there is a budget for ghost projects, then why is there no budget for the health sector?” She said, adding that the flight of public funds was “really shameful”.