Mud is no good

The image of irate protesters slinging mud on the façade of a controversial contractor’s office building, with a designated graffiti “artist” doggedly imprinting words in red paint onto part of the wall, was no different from recent newsreels bouncing out of social media and television.

It’s not a movie we care to see — people seeming to go berserk on the streets, running with flaming objects to torch public edifices, for example — because we know the real cost to life. The real cost to our equilibrium.

The whole show, to be very honest, is just sad.

How sad? Sad enough to find no energy to even grimace at the fact that Elizaldy Co is in America for “medical treatment.” That it’s just another cart in a train of escapees from Investigation Land is sad.

Sad enough to scoff at the subpoenas ordered by Congress to be farmed out to Department of Public Works and Highways executives and contractors. Show us the money trail, we say. But more than that — show us the names all the way to the top.

A report in this paper cites the House of Representatives hurling mud at acting Davao Mayor Sebastian Duterte for having the gall to suggest a probe into Speaker Martin Romualdez’s “ballooning” Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN), even as the Dutertes have never really made full disclosure of their SALNs.

It’s comedy at its darkest yet, the spade calling the spade — and we are not laughing. The money — its trappings, its unabashed flaunting — is the key to all this.

It is the reason the public has latched on to the incorrectly used term “nepo babies” with wholehearted glee. Their avid participation in the public crucifixion of kids of the alleged corrupt is a result of deep rage rising from within.

Mayor Baste has a point asking to look into the House leader’s assets — Filipinos are asking the same thing of all politicians nowadays. All, no exemptions.

It’s not Sarah Discaya and her 20-plus luxury cars that should matter as much — it is the path that led to the Philippines having low-key, small-scale contractors bagging billions worth of government contracts.

The House appropriations committee, previously headed by the former partylist congressman Zaldy Co, holds power beyond the ordinary Pinoy’s comprehension. During Co’s term as head of Appro, reports say, the projects rained on two companies he and his brother co-owned.

And now the young acting mayor of Davao is calling on the same committee to probe Romualdez’s alleged runaway wealth, which he says grew from a staggering P200 million to a death-defying P3 billion in the three years he had led the 19th Congress.

It’s a smear campaign, screams the House spokesperson. Fake news! Fabrications! Show us your SALNs, the House Speaker’s speaker said, blaring “hypocrisy of the highest order.”

Well, as we all know, we can throw around words like “transparency” and “accountability,” but those are just concepts that eventually come back to haunt us like garbage after the floods.

Calling for the examination of SALNs — ever since former Ombudsman Samuel Martires practically shielded erring politicians by issuing an order that restricted access to these documents in 2020 — is a joke that elicits a groan, not a laugh.

Perhaps, to those irate citizens expressing their rage at being taken for a ride by greedy politicians and their eager cohorts all these decades, hurling mud and red paint at building facades delivers instant gratification.

But it is really nothing compared to the wrath building up inside, fueled by trillions-worth of funds for flood control projects now lost, to excesses like private plane rides to Baguio and an endless stream of designer bags uglified by the fact that they were likely from stolen money.

Who cares, even, that Senator Imee Marcos, who obviously does not see eye-to-eye with her own brother, the President, is doing all she can to bring back attention to Rodrigo Duterte, whose daughter is likely to become top honcho of this blessed country by 2028.

The whole shebang is all for these leaders of a land gone berserk with mud and red paint.