CHICKENPIE.Martin Romualdez doesn't have a visa anymore. He also doesn't have permission to leave. Two exits, both closed — the country won't let him out, and his former vacation destination won't let him in.
For a man who once had a diplomatic passport and three houses across two continents, this is a new kind of geography.
The US State Department revoked both his diplomatic and tourist visas this week. This, on top of the Sandiganbayan's travel ban, which has been in effect since the flood control case started leaking documents faster than the flood control projects controlled floods. The representative from Leyte — once the most powerful man in the House, architect of supermajorities, cousin to the President — is now in the category of people who need to check which door is currently unlocked before planning their weekend.
The official line is that the US doesn't comment on individual visa cases. The ambassador confirmed it happened, declined to explain why. That's diplomatic language for: everyone already knows. You don't revoke a sitting legislator's diplomatic visa by accident. You revoke it when you've seen the file.
His allies are calling it selective persecution. They may be correct. The selection was apparently made by the Ombudsman, the Sandiganbayan, and the US Department of State — which is an unusually broad coalition of people doing the selecting.
The flood control probe began as an investigation into overpriced drainage contracts and infrastructure that somehow still floods every typhoon season. It has since become an organizational chart of who built what with whose money, and where the money went when the rain didn't.
The roads are still wet. The exits are closed. The receipts are somewhere in the legal discovery process now.
Somewhere in Leyte, a constituency waits for their representative to represent them. He's in the building. Just can't leave it.
