*Dr. Rodolfo John Ortiz Teope
The
Beginning of My Reflection
There
are moments when I sit in silence after watching the evening news, and I cannot
help but feel an ache in my chest. Not for myself, but for the countless
nameless Filipinos who have drowned, who have lost homes, who have buried their
children in muddy graves after another typhoon swept their town. Each time the
floods rise, I think of what has been stolen from us—not just money, not just
development—but lives.
When
President Marcos Jr. admitted that almost ₱100 billion worth of flood control
projects in just three years were concentrated in the hands of only fifteen
contractors, my mind went immediately to the faces of families I saw during
Ondoy, Yolanda, and Ulysses. I remember wading through the flood myself in
Marikina years ago, listening to a father cry because the water had taken away
his daughter. I remember farmers in Isabela, shoulders bent, weeping over their
destroyed harvests. These were not simply victims of nature. They were victims
of corruption.
When
Corruption Becomes Death
We
often think of corruption as some abstract thing. Politicians pocket money,
contractors cheat on materials, agencies look away. And then we shake our
heads, maybe even laugh bitterly, and move on. But corruption in flood control
is not abstract. It has a body count.
Each
ghost project is a death sentence waiting to be executed by the next heavy
rainfall. Each embankment built with half the concrete it needed is a coffin
prepared for someone who doesn’t know they’re about to die. Each peso stolen
from the budget is a peso stolen from a child’s chance to live another day.
It is
a betrayal so severe that it should no longer be called just “corruption.” It
is a crime against humanity. Because humanity is exactly what is harmed
here—not just money, but lives, dignity, and futures.
Faces
in the Water
I
cannot count the number of times I’ve heard the same heartbreaking story, told
in different provinces, different dialects. A mother clutching her youngest
child as the floodwaters rose, forced to let go of the other two. An elderly
couple trapped in their home because no one could reach them in time. A young
man drowned while trying to save his neighbors.
During
Typhoon Ulysses in 2020, Marikina became a lake again. I remember standing in
disbelief at the images—residents clinging to rooftops, rescuers overworked,
and people shouting for help from submerged homes. Billions had already been
spent on flood control before that. And yet, it was as if nothing had been
done. The projects were there on paper, celebrated in ribbon cuttings, but they
were ghosts when the people needed them most.
How
many of those deaths should be pinned not on the storm, but on those who signed
off substandard contracts? How many families grieve today not because of
nature’s wrath, but because of man’s greed?
The
ICC and the Irony of Numbers
I do
not say this to diminish the pain of the drug war victims, but let me pose the
question: if the International Criminal Court can investigate former President
Duterte for thousands of extrajudicial killings, then why not investigate
corruption that has killed even more?
According
to PAGASA, hundreds die each year from floods and landslides (PAGASA, 2022).
Multiply that over a decade, and the number surpasses the casualties of the
drug war. The difference is that the Flood Control Scam does not kill with
bullets. It kills with silence, with indifference, with the slow drowning of an
entire community. But the cruelty is the same. In fact, it may even be worse.
At least with bullets, there is honesty in violence. With corruption, death is
disguised as “acts of God,” when in truth it is the act of thieves.
Lessons
from Abroad
When
the Morandi Bridge collapsed in Genoa, Italy in 2018, killing 43 people, the
entire country demanded accountability. Executives and officials were charged
with manslaughter because negligence and corruption had paved the way for that
tragedy (Bianconi, 2021).
When
the Rana Plaza garment factory fell in Bangladesh, killing over a thousand
workers, it was declared not an accident but a man-made massacre caused by
corruption, bribery, and neglect (Human Rights Watch, 2013).
Why
then do we Filipinos so easily shrug when floods claim hundreds of lives after
billions were spent on protection? Why do we settle for Senate “inquiries in
aid of legislation” that end in nothing but grandstanding? Why do we allow
ghost projects to haunt us year after year without demanding that their
architects face the bar of justice?
The
Political Cartel of Flood Control
I used to teach Accounting and Business Management. So when I heard about the ₱100 billion funneled into only fifteen contractors, I immediately thought of financial statements and Net Financial Contracting Capacity (NFCC). These companies, many of them single proprietorships with laughably small capital, should never have qualified for billion-peso contracts. Yet here they were, bagging projects meant to defend millions of Filipinos against floods.
It
does not take an accountant to see what happened here: a cartel of contractors
and politicians, manipulating figures, exchanging envelopes, and laughing their
way to the bank while the rest of the nation waded through waist-deep floods.
And so I ask: when the flood rises and sweeps away children, is that not murder by another name? When politicians sign off on ghost projects, knowing the danger, are they not complicit in mass killing?
My
Personal Burden
I must
confess that I take this matter quite seriously. I count myself among those who
survived the Ondoy disaster. Remembering how close I came to losing not just my
property but even my own life is something that I still do. It is possible that
I would have been stranded in floodwaters with my vehicle if I had not skipped
class on that particular day due to my utter annoyance with a fellow worker.
That annoyance, as weird as it may sound, was the thing that ultimately saved
my life. There were others who did not fare as well.
This is the reason why I am unable to view these so-called "scams"
with the same level of dispassion that many others show. My ability to
summarize them in headlines or hashtags is limited. mainly due to the fact that
I have witnessed the damage that may be caused by floods and I am aware of the
consequences that occur when the government fails to fulfill its
responsibilities.
If the deaths of individuals are not the result of an inescapable fate but
rather of corruption in government, then the responsibility for the deaths lies
not with the rain but with those who are corrupt.
A Call
for Justice
I
believe the Flood Control Scam should not be treated as just another graft and
corruption case in our courts. It deserves to be elevated to the level of
crimes against humanity. Why? Because it was not an isolated act. It was
systematic. It was widespread. It targeted civilians by denying them
protection. And it was done with full knowledge of the consequences. The
perpetrators knew exactly what they were doing. They knew that ghost projects
meant there would be no protection when the floods came. They knew that
substandard work meant the walls, dikes, and floodways would collapse. They
knew that every bribe taken, every shortcut approved, was equivalent to a life
placed in danger. And despite knowing all this, they still chose to do it.
This, to me, is no different in gravity from extrajudicial killings. EJK is
what we call active killing—when a person is gunned down in cold blood,
directly and violently. Corruption, on the other hand, is passive killing. It
does not use a bullet or a knife, but it slowly robs people of life through
disasters that should have been prevented, through resources stolen that could
have saved communities. One kills swiftly, the other kills silently—but both
kill just the same. That is the very essence of a crime against humanity. It is
not just the act itself, but the deliberate choice to profit from the suffering
of others, knowing full well that lives will be lost. The Flood Control Scam is
proof that corruption, when it reaches this scale, is not merely theft—it is
complicity in death.
Conclusion:
Naming the Crime
In the
end, my reflection always comes back to this: corruption in flood control is
not just theft. It is killing by another name. And if we refuse to name it for
what it is, then we are accomplices in silence.
To
every Filipino who has ever lost a loved one to floods, I say this: you were
not abandoned by nature—you were betrayed by your leaders. To every human who
died, every child who drowned, every senior citizen who perished, every family
torn apart, and to every property destroyed that causes the loss of homes,
shelter, and livelihood leading to death, I say this: your deaths should not be
counted as “collateral damage.” They are evidence in the case against
corruption as a crime against humanity.
The
floods may wash away our homes, but they should never wash away our memory. And
they should never wash away our demand for justice.
References
Bianconi, F. (2021). Bridge collapse in Genoa: Corruption,
negligence, and accountability. Journal of Civil Engineering and Architecture,
15(6), 325–334.
Human Rights Watch. (2013). Bangladesh: Rana Plaza building
collapse. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org
PAGASA. (2022). Annual climate and disaster statistics.
Department of Science and Technology, Quezon City.
World Bank. (2021). Philippines disaster risk management
and resilience report. Washington, DC: World Bank
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