By Mary Lou Cunanan

Let’s stop pretending this is normal.

Sarah Discaya and her husband have turned government bidding into a personal slot machine—rigged so they always hit the jackpot.

With nine construction firms under their control, they’ve cornered ₱30 billion worth of DPWH projects, most of them flood-control contracts that never seem to deliver. And yet, here she sits in front of the Senate, claiming her companies “compete” against each other. Compete? That’s not competition—it’s a con. It’s stuffing the ballot box, fixing the fight, stacking the deck.

However you call it, the game is rigged. The purpose of bidding is simple: fairness. It’s supposed to give the people the best project at the best price. But when one player enters nine times under different masks, fairness dies. What we get instead are ghost projects, shoddy work, and the same family laughing all the way to the bank. This is not just incompetence—it’s complicity.

Agencies let blacklisted firms like St. Gerrard and St. Timothy keep winning contracts despite unfinished or substandard work. Billions in taxpayers’ money go straight into the pockets of companies already proven untrustworthy. That’s not a loophole. That’s willful betrayal.

And the arrogance? Discaya flaunts it. At the Senate, she casually admitted to owning 28 luxury cars—a Rolls-Royce Cullinan worth ₱42 million, a G-Wagon, Bentleys, Mercedes-Maybachs, Cadillacs. Her explanation? Some are for her kids, some for her staff. While floodwaters drown communities, she stockpiles toys worth more than most Filipinos will see in a lifetime.

As if that wasn’t enough, she tried to buy her way into politics, throwing over ₱1 billion into a doomed mayoral run against Vico Sotto in Pasig. She plastered her face across the city, paraded herself in glossy interviews with Korina Sanchez and Julius Babao, and still got crushed—326,000 to 26,000. Pasig said no. Loudly.

But here’s the infuriating part: losing the election didn’t end her empire. She and her husband still dominate public works contracts. Every peso stolen from a classroom, every unfinished dike, every botched road project—it all lines her garage with another Bentley. This isn’t just corruption. It’s an insult. To taxpayers. To communities begging for real flood protection. To every honest contractor who can’t even get a foot in the door.

We’re told bidding is transparent, that it serves the public good. But what we’re watching isn’t governance. It’s daylight robbery dressed up as paperwork. So let’s call it what it is: Bidding? More like bullshitting.