Trash

When the floods finally subsided, the sight it left behind was a glaring reminder of that oft-cited but always ignored axiom that garbage, irresponsibly disposed of, will return to you when the rains come.

A new thought came up recently, by the way, born of the flood control fiasco currently testing our much-vaunted good cheer: “They tried their best to hide their corruption. Then God sent the rain.”

This is one of many flood-related memes going around, and while people are still snarky and comedic at this point, there may come a time when no amount of good humor will stem the public outrage. It has been happening a lot elsewhere.

While we are being given warnings — in the form of corrupt officials getting their just desserts in South Korea and riotous street protests in Indonesia over the atrocious perks of politicians and “corrupt elites” in government, among other issues—we should do more than point fingers at our leaders; we should examine our role in all this.

But garbage — and how local governments are collecting and managing waste programs — is another story (and some say potential pits of corruption too).

What we should look into right now, in case we have stopped gasping at the level of filth in government uncovered by the deluge of flood control lies, is that this is not new.

No, this is something the Filipino people have already been through.

In the last decade alone, in the aftermath of the horror and stress of the Covid-19 pandemic, we woke up one day with the Pharmally scandal, where public servants were raking in billions from overpriced medical supplies, more inclined to lining their pockets than serving the public’s real needs.

The Department of Health and related agencies are known to be fertile ground for the underhanded and greedy, but then again, any of the 21 executive departments can be a sinkhole for moral turpitude. Whether it’s housing, defense, or education, we know that when a system is rotten to the core, graft flourishes.

Of course, how can we forget the ZTE-NBN deal, where the whistleblower Jun Lozada ended up the one behind bars, and the alleged main characters moved on to claim government seats, until now.

It should behoove us to examine this kind of dirt coming back to haunt us, when scandals erupt and the people are hooked on a telenovela of lies, deceit, greed and endless grandstanding.

What’s funny about this roiling controversy we are following on the flood control ghost projects is that the Senate investigation may end up with the most guilty parties running off on their merry way and the poor little fall guys taking on the nation’s wrath.

At this point, we can presume that those in Congress who have ink in their fingernails are hellbent on removing any traces of their culpability. At what point are we going to see anything substantial resulting from this barrage of questionings that only succeed in getting the people’s hackles up?

When will we see the Sandiganbayan at work, or perhaps those special investigative teams they are forming now, about which we can wonder who in the world would be upright and trustworthy enough in the public eye to conduct such investigations?

The slowness of this process we are seeing — intermittent hearings, seemingly arbitrary decisions to “cleanse” erring departments, a rigodon of officials — only gives the garbage time to sink down into the depths, undetectable, until another storm brings the trash back up to the surface of our minds.