Typhoon ‘Ping'

There is a science to corruption — or is it mathematics?

The findings of what could only be called an investigation by the team of Senator Ping Lacson have been brutal, not just for the unnamed politicians and cohorts who are possibly involved, but to the psyche of the Filipino public.

To be served numbers, percentages of “takes” and actual comparisons of projects signed, sealed but undelivered is indescribably, indubitably painful. How many more Janet Napoleses are we to meet before the Filipino is finally free of the shackles of corruption?

From agriculture to flood control, the formula seems to have been set long ago. It was, and it remains, a betrayal of trust, an outright murder of the people’s future. Taxpayers cry foul, but will there be a tax audit of the accused? Perennial sufferers of flooding are livid, but will heads roll?

If history were to repeat itself, then the public will have to settle for wishing for the greedy parties to experience the loss, despair and grief they undergo every time person, property and pocket get submerged in floodwaters.

The whole fracas is astounding in its breadth and scope. Among other questions: why is President Bongbong Marcos so tough all of a sudden (or why just now)? Why are senators applauding Sen. Lacson’s gumption all of a sudden (or just now)? The fact that billions worth of flood control funding had been found murky is quite telling of a leadership gone haywire.

What’s more shocking than this ballyhooed “widespread corruption” is the seeming shock we are seeing. Suddenly. Just now.

Was it only yesterday that eyes were bulging out of their sockets over the ZTE-NBN deal, the pork barrel scam, the cyber-ed brouhaha? Ping Lacson only affirms what we have known all along — a systemic corruption that not one leader has succeeded in stemming.

Perhaps the President’s solution may work — call my hotline and I will personally see to the complaints. The intention is there, but will Marcos Jr. have enough time left in his tenure to check the countless irregularities people may end up reporting? His government thus far has taken its time reacting to something many have complained about before, until the floodwaters became too much to contain—the problems associated with it, that is.

By uncovering the “schemes” he probably saw going on from his past stints in government, Lacson is the typhoon in the government leaders in cahoots with private sector officials’ parade. Yet while the winds blow in secret deals and SOPs and a vast, complicated web of greed, one can only pray that this type of storm does not let up until the last of the rotted pieces of wasted matter has been blown away.