Waterworld

“Only in the Philippines,” as they say. Yes, it’s only in this God-forsaken country that taxpayer money is poured into flood control projects yet people still need boats to go buy pan de sal.

We’ve been promised — to the point of nauseating regularity — canals, pumping stations and dikes. But what we actually get are ghost projects, recycled contracts and drainage plans that only look good on paper.

Alas, there are just too many infamous cases to cite — like those in Bulacan that exist only in official documents, without a single shovel of dirt being moved. Still, the cash somehow flowed nicely, prompting that intrepid senator, Ping Lacson, to make sense of the many ways our money is stolen by coming up with his portmanteau — corruptionary. That entry “distinct” is, hmmm, distinct in its descriptive power: flood control projects with the exact same cost, no matter the differing sizes and locations.

Over at the Senate hearings, the contractors did forgo their designer clothes and multi-million-peso watches (yep, we’ve seen them in those fluff “lifestyles of the rich and famous” TV features before the scandal broke wide open) to appear modest.

Meantime, DPWH bureaucrats suddenly developed amnesia, while many senators feigned shock — as if the funding for those projects didn’t emanate from their chamber, from the House of Representatives, and their cabal of a select few lording it over at the bicameral conference committee.

Malacañang is predictably furious, with the President promising an independent commission, blacklists, and the pièce de résistance: Sumbong sa Pangulo, an online complaint box. Because nothing fixes systemic corruption like a Google Form? Like dwellers in an echo chamber, finance officials lament the economy might have grown faster had the money been used properly.

As if the fish vendors in Navotas really care. “Julie, cancel my order for tuyo (dried fish). The GDP only grew 5 percent!”

Ordinary folks call it treason, but for this Contrarian, it’s more like tradition. We’ve seen it all before — pork barrel funds, overpriced fertilizer and roads that lead nowhere. The cruelty of it all has nothing to do with golden cauldrons or arenas, but with the cover story for the billions squandered — the projects were supposed to keep our heads above floodwater. Instead, kids kayak their way to school, jeepneys stall in waist-deep water, and entire barangays turn into swimming pools every rainy season. Meanwhile, somewhere in a posh village of the nouveau riche, a contractor sips an Aperol Spritz beside his infinity pool — which, ironically, probably cost less than the drainage canal that never got built.

So what happens now? More hearings, more commissions, more portals nobody checks. A senator will thunder for accountability, bureaucrats will shed crocodile tears, and in a few weeks, the headlines will drift away like floodwater into the Pasig. Until the next storm, the next scandal and the next recycled promise.

Truly, when it rains, it pours. And when it pours, someone, somewhere, is cashing in. If you sense cynicism here, it’s because at the rate this thievery is happening, we better develop gills like those ocean-going beings in Kevin Costner’s Waterworld.