The Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap, or Kadamay, the urban poor group aligned with the Left, is always in the news for all the wrong reasons. This time could be its own undoing.

Last week, a Kadamay member was shown in a video clip during a TV news broadcast alleging that he was either selling or renting out one of the homes taken over by the militant group last year.

Malacañang ordered a probe after a report on GMA News quoted the National Housing Authority (NHA) as warning beneficiaries of government housing projects that they could not pawn, sell or rent out the property.

The NHA earlier obtained a video that showed Kadamay member Jerry Lavado supposedly trying to sell a government-issued housing unit located in Barangay Sitio Cacarong Bata, Pandi.

Lavado denied this, insisting that he only helped pawn the unit as his neighbor needed money for the hospitalization of his child.

To recall, President Rodrigo Duterte allowed Kadamay members to stay in the houses they forcibly occupied in Pandi in March last year.

Kadamay members occupied close to 6,000 of the more than 10,000 housing units in Pandi town.

Kadamay has very little credibility and public sympathy remaining at this point, especially after its members complained of the lack of utilities and the small floor areas in homes they were not supposed to occupy in the first place.

Their initial reaction of regret and subsequent defiance is not helping their cause. “For whatever reason, Kadamay will investigate this matter and implement the appropriate actions to halt and prevent these types of transactions,” Kadamay said on January 30.

A few days later, Kadamay changed its tune and is now accusing the NHA of carrying out a “smear campaign” in a supposed bid to kick its members out of Pandi, as well as to “slander” the Left following the collapse of peace talks between the government and communist rebels.

It even accuses the NHA, without any shred of evidence, of trying to entrap its members, while pivoting to different macro issues such as poverty, the lack of employment, bureaucratic inefficiency, etc.

Unfortunately for Kadamay, the NHA, as a government entity, enjoys the presumption of regularity in its actions. The NHA was well within its mandate to ensure that beneficiaries of the government’s housing program honor their commitment.

With the NHA’s revelation that about 600 homes are no longer occupied by the original Kadamay beneficiaries, the organization has been further exposed as a group of hucksters.

They have abused the kindness and goodwill shown to them by the Duterte administration, which generously allowed them to occupy the NHA project in Pandi even if they were not in the queue for government-issued housing units.

Kadamay has to come clean and prove its sincerity by policing its ranks, weeding out the opportunists, and doing away with its tired excuses. Otherwise, it truly deserves the opprobrium of public opinion.