The flood control scandal exposed the rot at the top and our willingness to forget. There is a particular kind of rage that Filipinos are very good at, the kind that fills streets on a Sunday, trends on X by Monday, and is forgotten by Friday. We saw it again with the flood control scandal. Billions of pesos, your money, your children’s money funneled into ghost projects, substandard concrete, and the pockets of contractors with the right political connections. Filipinos flooded the streets in the “Trillion Peso March.” They held signs. They chanted. They posted. And then, mostly, they waited. They are still waiting.
President Marcos himself announced that the officials and masterminds behind infrastructure corruption would spend Christmas in jail. It was a bold line, the kind that gets applause in press briefings and shares on Facebook. Christmas came and went. The officials did not go to jail. No prominent figure has been detained. No one of significance has been made to answer.
This is not a failure of investigation. This is a choice. Corruption of this scale — ghost projects, inflated contracts, billions redirected from flood victims to favored contractors — does not happen without names, receipts, and paper trails. The paper trails exist. What is missing is the political will to follow them to the people who matter.
And now, conveniently, we are all watching something else: the Marcos-Duterte political war. Two camps, both with corruption allegations of their own, are now locked in a battle for dominance over the 2028 presidential race. Both sides are leaking scandals about the other. Both sides are crying “victim.” Both sides want your outrage directed at the other camp.
Do not take the bait. The flood control money is gone regardless of who wins that political war. The ghost projects were built, or rather, not built, under this administration. The contractors who pocketed those funds have names and addresses. None of that changes depending on whether Sara Duterte or Bongbong Marcos controls Malacañang in 2028.
We have a gift for transforming systemic outrage into personal drama. The trillion-peso question is not “Which dynasty do you support?” The question is, “Why does no one go to jail?” Here is the uncomfortable truth: when protest produces no accountability, it eventually becomes a ritual. Something we do to feel like we tried before going home, going online and moving on to the next thing that makes us angry.
The Trillion Peso March was historic. The people who showed up were brave and right to show up. But bravery on the streets must translate into sustained pressure on prosecutors, on the Ombudsman, on Congress, and on every official who sat in a budget hearing and approved these line items without flinching.
Rallying is the beginning of accountability. It is not the end of it. The officials who signed off on these projects know that Filipinos have short memories and long election cycles. They are betting that by 2028, you will have moved on. History suggests they are probably right. History also suggests that every time they are right, the next scandal gets a little bigger, a little bolder, a little more expensive.
Demand names. Every peso that went to a ghost project was authorized by someone. Every substandard flood wall that collapsed during the next typhoon was approved by someone. Those someones have names, and those names are in the public record. Demand that civil society, opposition lawmakers and independent journalists publish and repeat those names until the justice system has no choice but to act. And most of all do not let this become a chapter in a history book that begins, “Filipinos were outraged, but eventually...”
The floods will come again. They always do. And if nothing changes, the money meant to protect you will disappear again too, right on schedule.
