The Romualdez Clan: Harbinger of Bad News, Bad Luck, Bad Governance
By Alex Buenaventura
Two things that spread faster than wildfire in the Philippines: news and political power. What kind of monstrosity is a dynasty trying to outrun for monopolizing the two?
For decades, the Romualdez clan under the leadership of ex-governor Benjamin Romualdez have been seizing positions to represent the greater Eastern Visayas but even greater evil is the concurrent mass media empire they are swiftly and silently building.
Being the youngest brother to Imelda Marcos, their acquisition of journalistic firms and rise in politics dates back to the Marcos regime where complete media censorship was employed and only their family’s cronies were allowed to operate.
Under the management of Benjamin Romualdez, journalists who were removed from their posts due to the closure of several media companies established the Philippine Journalists’ Inc. publishing their flagship newspaper ‘Times Journal’ in 1972. Various newspapers were then launched in the succeeding years from the same company namely ‘People’s Journal’ and ‘People’s Tonight’ co-founded by several editors from the guild with one ultimate concern: censorship. Their testimonies included narratives on military men — as directed by the Media Advisory Council — scrutinizing their work, leaving stories of atrocities, critiques about the government, and pieces with revolutionary connotations left untold.
Benjamin’s loyalty to the Marcoses led to his two-decade rule in Leyte and an eventual Philippine ambassadorship to China, Saudi Arabia, and the United States which were all put to a halt in the 1986 People Power Revolution where this same lapdog mentality pushed his family into exile. With unfortunate impudence, the Marcos-Romualdez clan returned to the Philippines to continue their false legacy in the Philippine government through their family heirs. One of which is Martin Romualdez, the 15-year firstdistrict representative of Leyte whom Sandro Marcos nominated as the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and elected by landslide after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s inauguration.
As seemed traditional in their pedigree, Martin also sealed another position in Congress through his wedded vows as his wife Yedda Romualdez was first elected as the 1st district representative of Leyte in 2016 while currently serving as the Representative of Tingog Partylist and the Chairman of the House Committee on Accounts. This joint dominance partnered with their growing ownership of broadcast media companies granted them a fool-proof disguise on allegations of corruption and any other morally bankrupt involvements of their dynasty.
The most recent acquisition was a joint venture with ABS-CBN’s radio distribution network naming his own holding company, Prime Media, as 51% shareholder in 2023. This craving can be traced back almost five years ago when the couple voted against the franchise renewal of ABS-CBN — a direct assault on press freedom. Acquiring the radio company adds to the multitude of Romualdez-owned mass media platforms under the Philippine Collective Media Corporation which was rooted in the Visayas Region back in 2008 starting with their local station PRTV.
Narrowing the geographic influence, these long years of suppression ingrained in Taclobanons from the province of Leyte have ushered them to a reputation for silence in the name of “peace”, allowing for a crashing system to save face even in the midst of political unrest. A direct consequence of one more of their name as an incumbent Mayor — Alfred Romualdez, a cousin to the Speaker of the House.
The forward regional media dominance further controlled the narrative favorable to the Romualdez clan in Eastern Visayas through coverage, campaigns, and a public image laced with honey. It became a platform for political messaging and a tool to promote the Speaker’s legislative initiatives to champion the projects derived from his overall “positive” qualities. All of which are contrary to a long list of questionable mandates he supported, left unscrutinized by an influential branch of broadcasting.
As current member of the Congress, one of his earliest signatories was the bill to create the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF), a sovereign wealth fund that is a complete dismissal to the most urgently investible aspects of the Philippines: its growing food, housing, and health crisis that could cost lives that will not return after the projected years of wait to garner the MIF’s Return on Investment (ROI).
Consequently, he positioned himself eager to pursue charter change in the lower chamber, mainly to amend the economic provisions in the 1987 Philippine Constitution. It largely targets lifting the provision on the ceiling of foreign ownership, stripping the protection of the Filipino people to their right of access to the natural resources in the Philippine territories — A stance that will generate greater environmental collapse while establishing international grade cronies who are anti-masses.
However, his penchant for good press is a tale as old as time considering his abhorrent fabrication of a positive disaster response to typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) as an advertisement for his 2016 bid for senatorial elections. Statements from the survivors conveyed that his plan of action, or lack thereof, made a deadly natural disaster even more catastrophic.
All of which leads us back to mid-January 2025 when the typhoon victims finally received the Yolanda Permanent Housing Project, three presidential administrations and four combined congress terms in the making. The local coverage failed to mention the incompetence boosted by corrupted funds that led to the delay of the aid and housing projects lined up.
Unsurprisingly, the story also gave big regard to Bongbong Marcos, claiming him as one of the pioneers of the initiative during the turnover ceremony when Romualdez himself could have easily initiated a more adequate timeline as the district representative. A cruel reality of additional political interest motivating its sudden expedition — parallel to the mouthpiece he has become for the current president just like his father for the president’s father.
As Romualdez steadily maintains his seat as a top candidate in national politics and the business of media, the threat of press manipulation and repression to cover up master-level felonies, graft, and immorality is at an all-time high. Reversing a history doomed to repeat itself right under our noses — it is in knowing the crime of committing the same tragic lineage of fate shall the people skip to exiling the silencers of our speech before it evolves into silencers in weaponry.
