Thousands in Philippines protest corruption and demand return of stolen funds from flood projects

Thousands of demonstrators including from the Roman Catholic church clergy protested in the Philippines on Sunday, calling for the swift prosecution of top legislators and officials implicated in a corruption scandal that has buffeted the Asian democracy.

MANILA, Philippines — Thousands of demonstrators including from the Roman Catholic church clergy protested in the Philippines on Sunday, calling for the swift prosecution of top legislators and officials implicated in a corruption scandal that has buffeted the Asian democracy.

Left-wing groups led a separate protest in Manila’s main park with a blunt demand for all implicated government officials to immediately resign and face prosecution.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has been scrambling to quell public outrage over the massive corruption blamed for substandard, defective or nonexistent flood control projects across an archipelago long prone to deadly flooding and extreme weather in tropical Asia.

More than 17,000 police officers were deployed in metropolitan Manila to secure the separate protests. The Malacanang presidential palace complex in Manila was in a security lockdown with key access roads and bridges blocked by anti-riot police officers, trucks and barbed wire railings.

In a deeply divided democracy where two presidents have been separately overthrown in the last 39 years partly over allegations of plunder, there have been isolated calls for the military to withdraw support from the Marcos administration.