*Dr. Rodolfo John Ortiz Teope, PhD, EdD
I sat in a budget
hearing back in the year 2000, when I was still a consultant for a government
agency. I went there with so much idealism, believing that the process I was
about to witness was democracy at work. For me, it was more than numbers on
paper. It was about lives, about the sweat of ordinary Filipinos converted into
taxes, and about the promise that government would return those taxes in the
form of services and protection. But in the middle of those long hours of
deliberation, I began to notice something strange. Projects that technical
people had worked hard to prepare were suddenly being cut. And in their place,
new allocations magically appeared—projects that were never part of the plan,
never seen in the original proposals, but suddenly defended with such energy by
certain lawmakers. That was the first time I heard the word whispered in the
halls: insertions.
It was a disheartening revelation, the moment when I realized that the budget
was not simply a document of priorities but also a tool of politics, easily
bent in favor of power.
Fast forward to
today, more than two decades later, and the same story continues. Every year,
we see billions of pesos allocated for flood
control projects. On paper, these funds should protect our communities from
the devastation of rising waters. Yet year after year, the floods still come,
drowning our streets, destroying our crops, washing away our homes. Each storm
exposes how fragile and temporary our defenses are. Dikes collapse, drainage
systems clog, pumping stations fail. And still, in the midst of these failures,
we hear of billions being inserted into the flood control budget, as though the
solution to flooding is to throw more money at it, even if much of that money
never reaches the ground.
I will never
forget September 26, 2009, when Typhoon
Ondoy poured a month’s worth of rain on Metro
Manila in a single day. That morning, I was supposed to attend my graduate
school class in the boundary of Quezon City and Manila, but I decided to stay home. I was irritated with an old lady co-faculty
member who had been spreading rumors about me, and I thought it best to avoid
the added stress. That irritation, as it turned out, became my unexpected
blessing. Because I stayed home, both I and my newly bought pyreneese black Mitsubishi
Adventure were spared from the floodwaters that swallowed streets and
stranded countless vehicles. I remember standing by the window in our
overlooking house in the mountains of San
Mateo, Rizal watching rivers of muddy water rushing through the roads, and
realizing how close I had come to disaster. In that moment, I understood that
survival often hangs on the thinnest of chances, and that the true tragedy is
when government repeatedly fails to turn billions of pesos into lasting
protection for its people.
The Ondoy tragedy
was supposed to change everything. We thought it was our wake-up call, the
disaster that would finally push our leaders to say “never again.” Billions
were poured into flood control after that. Yet here we are, fifteen years
later, still telling the same story.
And it wasn’t
just Ondoy. Yolanda
in 2013 tore through the Visayas
with storm surges so massive that they erased entire communities. Ulysses
in 2020 reminded Marikina
and Cagayan
Valley of Ondoy’s nightmare, as waters rose quickly and mercilessly. Paeng
in 2022 left trails of mud and mourning. Egay
in 2023 submerged northern
Luzon. Carina
in 2024 forced thousands into evacuation centers yet again. Each storm was a
reminder, each storm a test, and each storm a missed opportunity. Because
despite all the money allocated for flood control, we never truly learned how
to solve flooding once and for all.
When Senator
Ping Lacson delivered his privilege speech titled “Flooded
Gates of Corruption,” he put into words what many of us have long felt.
From 2023 to 2025 alone, more than a trillion pesos was allocated for flood
control. In Oriental
Mindoro, he uncovered projects worth nearly two billion pesos, where only a
fraction came from the President’s budget and more than a billion appeared
later as insertions in the House. He spoke about ghost projects and substandard
works. He described how money intended to save lives was siphoned into
kickbacks and commissions. In his words, only about forty percent of flood
control funds actually go into real projects. The rest is eaten away by greed.
And his warning rang clear: more than flood control, what the Filipino people
need is greed control.
This is why, no
matter how much money we pour into flood control, the waters keep coming back.
Because the problem is not just engineering—it is governance. Flood control has
become politically attractive because it is highly visible. A new dike can be photographed,
a drainage project can be inaugurated, a ribbon can be cut. But permanence is
different. Permanent solutions require vision, planning, and sacrifice. They
require watershed rehabilitation, reforestation, relocation of entire
communities, and urban planning that anticipates climate change. They require
confronting the fact that development has often been reckless, with houses and
malls built on waterways, mountains stripped of forests, and rivers left to
choke in silt. Those are not projects that can be rushed before elections. They
are not glamorous. And most importantly, they do not generate the same kind of
political currency that temporary “control” projects do.
What makes it
more painful is that the cost is always borne by ordinary Filipinos. The vendor
who watches her small stall float away, the tricycle driver whose vehicle is
submerged and ruined, the farmer whose rice field is drowned just before
harvest, the child who must leave school because his family is displaced—these
are the people who pay for the insertions. Each flood is not just water; it is
betrayal. It is the visible face of corruption, the proof that money meant to
protect us was diverted somewhere else.
I think back to
Ondoy, to Yolanda, to Ulysses, to Paeng, Egay, and Carina, and I see not only
natural disasters but opportunities wasted. Each storm should have been a
turning point. Each one should have been the last time we said “never again.”
And yet each time, we went back to business as usual. We poured billions more
into the same broken system, allowing insertions to thrive, allowing greed to
masquerade as governance.
It is easy to say
floods are inevitable, that typhoons are acts of God. But I cannot accept that
anymore. Flooding on this scale is not purely natural; it is political. It is
the result of choices made in budget hearings, of deals struck in bicameral conferences,
of projects inserted without merit, and of funds stolen instead of spent. The
water may rise because of rain, but it lingers because of corruption.
That day in 2000,
when I first heard the word insertion, I thought it was just a small detail in
the complexity of government. But now, after Ondoy and every storm since, I
realize it was more than a detail. It was a shadow cast over our democracy. A
shadow that stretches from the halls of Congress to the homes of flood victims.
A shadow that will not be lifted until we confront the truth: that no amount of
money can save us from floods if the system itself is flooded with greed.
Ergo, the
question of whether or not the floods can ever be prevented is one that we
frequently ask. I have faith that they are able to. There are other nations
that have done it. Some countries, such as the Netherlands,
Japan, and even Singapore, have demonstrated that flood control and prevention
together water flow management and community protection are possible via
careful planning, discipline, and honesty. However, there is one thing that we
have not yet accomplished: leaders who prioritize the well-being of their
constituents before political considerations and monetary gains. Up to that
point, each and every bicam insertion will not merely be a line item in the
budget; rather, it will be another stone that is placed on the back of the
Filipino people, another reason why the waters continue to rise and won't go
down.