Talk is cheap, flood control is expensive

The President made headlines during his latest SoNA when he promised to conduct swift, public investigations into the apparent corruption that attended billions of pesos worth of flood control projects.

His “mahiya naman kayo” (have some shame) directed at the supposed culprits hit home for millions of us Filipinos who had just suffered through another week of hellish flooding. Good line, good applause, good headlines.

But this is a matter that cannot end with words. We’ve been suffering through floods too long for that. Talk is cheap, as they say, and if that is all that is on offer, then this was never a serious effort to get to the root of the corruption but just another rerun of the same tired teleserye.

We ordinary citizens are not asking for anything complicated. If anomalies have been committed, name those responsible. If there is evidence of corruption, file charges. This whole business of “we’re thinking hard about whether to file a case” does not inspire confidence.

And while government hesitates, millions of families keep getting flooded out of their homes despite so many of these supposed “flood control” initiatives that cost taxpayers billions. They are the ones paying the real price for this “deliberation.”

And come on, if the President is only now starting to feel the outrage, someone please remind him that ordinary people like us have been furious for years. Not just at the rank smell of corruption, which seemingly gets worse every year but, more glaringly, at the absence of accountability that always follows. If the administration wants people to believe its fighting words, it needs to show clear, undeniable and substantial results.

To be clear, it is not just Malacañang on the hook. The Senate has jumped in with its own investigation, and here the stakes are, arguably, even higher. If their probe turns into a circus — or worse, an exercise in whitewashing designed to shield friends and allies (perhaps, even their own members?) --- then its credibility, already thinner than an old, overused t-shirt, will rip apart completely.

After months of shameful waffling on the impeachment case against VP Sara Duterte, capped by that embarrassing decision to “archive” the matter, the Senate’s reputation as a bastion for public accountability is at rock bottom. If they drop the ball here again, they might as well start holding sessions in clown makeup.

So, the call is straightforward. This cannot just be about putting on a show to manage the public outrage or kill time until tempers cool. We need — no demand — names. We demand cases. We expect convictions.

Because in the end, it boils down to simple arithmetic: if billions of pesos went down the corruption drain, then someone must account for the billions of pesos. If, in the coming months, all we get are more speeches and dramatic frowns on media, we will all know it was just another “palabas” (show) all along. And the tragedy of it all is this: while all this talk may be cheap, these geddem flood control projects certainly aren’t.

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Ibarra “Barry” Gutierrez III is a lawyer, policy expert, and former legislator who authored landmark laws such as the Philippine Competition Law. A Fulbright scholar with degrees from UP and NYU, he served as OVP Spokesperson under Leni Robredo and now teaches at UP Law, where he once directed the Institute of Human Rights.