I once heard a story that never left me—a tale of a crime leader finally captured after years of evading justice. His arrest was hailed as a national victory. The news celebrated it, the people applauded, and authorities proudly proclaimed that the syndicate he led had finally been dismantled.
But as the months passed, a darker truth surfaced. Even behind bars, he continued to command operations. His minions—men he had positioned carefully in communities, businesses, and even government offices—never stopped working. They still followed his instructions with the same precision as before. The threats continued. The extortion continued. The invisible machinery of his syndicate remained alive.
It made me ask: How can someone imprisoned still wield so much power?
Eventually, I understood. The man’s freedom was removed, but his influence was not. His physical body was confined, but his network remained active in every office, every phone call, every quiet transaction carried out by those who stayed loyal to him. The head was jailed, but the tentacles continued to move.
This story returned to my thoughts as I watched the unfolding of the flood control scandal—a chapter in our nation’s political life where certain officials were compelled to resign. Their exits were dramatic, public, and seemingly decisive. The public was assured that justice had taken its course.
But as someone who has lived inside public service, as a former municipal councilor, as an educator, as a mentor to law enforcement officers, and as a Filipino who has spent years studying governance, integrity, and the anatomy of corruption, I know that real danger does not end with resignation.
Because in our government today, the same truth persists:
They may have resigned, but their tentacles remain.
I have seen how corruption embeds itself—not through one person alone, but through a web of loyalties, quiet arrangements, and appointments placed strategically across agencies. These individuals—the protégés, the operators, the insiders—stay behind even after their benefactors fall.
They continue to process documents.
They continue to approve projects.
They continue to whisper instructions.
They continue the shadow operations.
Public administration scholars call this bureaucratic capture, a phenomenon where institutions are slowly taken over by interests that do not serve the public good. But beyond academic terminology, I have witnessed this personally. Good people get marginalized. Honest voices get drowned. And corrupt networks thrive because they have been allowed to plant themselves deeply into the system.
This is why I cannot join in the celebration of these resignations—not yet. A resignation is merely the removal of the face of corruption, not the body. It is a symbolic victory, not a structural reform. The deeper problem lies not in the departure of officials but in the survival of their appointees, their operators, their tentacles—still embedded in the bureaucracy, still carrying out the same old playbook.
I write this with the weight of someone who has spent years teaching young officers that integrity is non-negotiable. That service must never be anchored on loyalty to one person, but to the nation. That corruption destroys not just funds, but hope, morale, and the future of generations yet unborn.
And yet, we again face a system where corruption regenerates like a wound that refuses to heal because the infection is still inside. Corruption hides in friendships, alliances, debts owed, and silent obedience. It is not the leader alone—it is the entire architecture supporting him.
So I return to the image of that imprisoned crime leader. His downfall looked like justice from afar, but it was not justice at all. The body was jailed, yet the syndicate lived on through the tentacles left free to operate.
Our situation today feels painfully similar.
Unless we dismantle the networks, unless we remove the embedded operators, unless we cleanse the bureaucracy not only of personalities but of the loyalties they planted, we are not confronting corruption—we are merely rearranging it.
And so let us face this truth boldly:
Unless the tentacles of these corrupt officials who resigned are finally removed from government, corruption will always be there to exist.
And perhaps what is even more troubling is this: even as they resign, somewhere in the shadows, quiet celebrations continue. The celebration remains with them, because for them, little has changed. ’Di lang sa kanila ang may beer.
In their hidden circles, the tentacles will raise their glasses and proudly declare:
“Laging may beer sa amin.”
A haunting reminder that unless we cut them off completely, they will continue to toast to a system they believe still belongs to them.
