₱1-Million-a-Day Seminars and the Billion-Peso Steps: Unmasking the Grand Illusions of Davao City’s Golden Projects

Wazzup Pilipinas!?

DAVAO CITY – Where every footstep on the pavement is paved with gold and every day in the calendar carries the price tag of a million pesos.

This is not a script from a dystopian satire. This is the unfolding reality of a city once hailed for its discipline and simplicity, now turning heads for a different reason: opulence disguised as governance.

At the center of this financial spectacle is Councilor Bernie Al-ag—a name suddenly cast in the political twilight after what appears to be a noble act of public service: asking the right questions.

And what did that cost him?

Everything.

Stripped of his chairmanship. Deprived of his right to hire contractual staff. Excommunicated from the Duterte-aligned political inner circle. All because he dared to question a line item in the city’s supplemental budget under Mayor Baste Duterte—a line item that reeked of excess.

The budget item in question?

A staggering ₱350 million earmarked for “capability building trainings and seminars.” That’s ₱1 million per day, 365 days a year, including Sundays and holidays—because apparently, skill-building never sleeps.

Million-Peso Lessons in Governance—or Misgovernance?

To put things in perspective: ₱350 million could provide scholarships to 3,500 students at ₱100,000 each per school year. That’s a full university campus worth of future doctors, teachers, and engineers.

But no. Instead, this mountain of taxpayer money is earmarked for seminars. No detailed breakdown. No visible impact reports. Just the vague phrase: capability building.

For asking, “Why?”, Councilor Al-ag was politically crucified.

Yet, the bigger crucifixion is being borne by the ordinary Filipino—the taxpayer footing the bill for a lavish governance playbook that seems more concerned with image than integrity.

₱1-Million per Step: The Davao Coastal Road Enigma

If that wasn’t jaw-dropping enough, let’s take one step—literally—into another controversy: the Davao City Coastal Road.

This 17.33-kilometer project, started under the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, now boasts a budget of ₱33.77 billion. That’s a mind-numbing ₱1.64 billion per kilometer—eight to ten times more than the standard cost of a four-lane national highway.

That translates to ₱1.6 million per meter. Every step you take on that road is, in effect, a million-peso march. Try walking 10 meters—you just "spent" more than what a rural barangay would receive in annual development funds.

Yes, the road includes right-of-way expenses and civil works. But even after removing those factors, the numbers still defy logic. Or, perhaps, they expose it: the logic of corruption.

The Dutertes’ Davao: Debt-Free or Debt-Shifted?

City Hall loves to tout that Davao is "debt-free." But that’s only true in the same way a child is debt-free because the parents pay the bills.

The reality is more sobering: many of these mega-projects, including the Coastal Road, were financed by national loans. Loans that every Filipino—from Ilocos to Tawi-Tawi—is now helping to repay. Not Davao. Not the Dutertes. But you.

“Walang utang,” they say. But the debt is real. It just doesn’t show up in their accounting books.

Spoiled Governance, Starved Accountability

The extravagance of these projects reveals a troubling mindset: lavishness cloaked in legitimacy, projects greenlit under the guise of development but shrouded in opacity.

The ₱1-million-a-day seminars and the ₱1-million-per-step highway aren’t just fiscal scandals—they’re moral indictments of a leadership style that prioritizes grandeur over grassroots needs.

Davao was once the poster child of discipline and pragmatic governance. Today, it teeters on the edge of becoming a case study in elite detachment and unchecked ambition.

A Glimmer of Resistance

Councilor Bernie Al-ag may have been punished for questioning the emperor’s clothes, but his resistance leaves a resounding echo: Some still choose the truth over power.

And if there's any silver lining in this costly tale, it’s that whistleblowers still exist—even if they are muffled by political retribution.

The real question now is not just “Where did the money go?”

It is: “How long will we let them walk million-peso roads while the rest of the country treads in potholes of poverty?”

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