Besides the uncompromising hunt for the high-flying, barong-clad predators who gorged on flood control projects, we must realize that before going in for the kill we must first hunt high and low.

Translated, the common hunting phrase “hunt high and low” means that we must thoroughly search in every possible nook and cranny.

Why? For the reason that the unsated predators were — and are still — in full control of the decaying political, economic, legal, and moral systems under which we live.

At the moment, we undoubtedly face daunting challenges in unraveling how our fragile control systems morphed into a singular predatory regime and in how to control the predation that might yet prove fatal.

Right away, we clearly see that predation is the defining force that allowed the dark forces behind the predatory regime to go wild.

And, as the sheer scale of the systematic looting of the flood control funds clearly revealed, this stealthy predatory regime birthed rapacious and privileged powerful cliques that have mangled our fragile systems beyond recognition, for their own benefit while the rest of us foot the bill.

Indeed, the rapacity of this greedy new class, whom we had put in charge, clearly has done nothing for public purposes.

They, in fact, do not even recognize that “public purposes” exist, that the primary purpose of government and the state is to protect the well-being of its citizens, instead of targeting them.

If “public purposes” did exist, there wouldn’t have been the ghastly discoveries of ghost and substandard flood control projects, which has since turned fair-haired Public Works boss Vince Dizon into a prematurely old man.

If they did exist, there wouldn’t have been those meaningless party-list parties — led by nepo children, construction CEOs, cults, and other aberrations — calling the shots in Congress to hatch nefarious schemes and steal from the public coffers.

If they did exist, there wouldn’t be the recent shocking confession by the Bangko Sentral that the billion-peso loot from the corruption flowed easily through government-owned financial institutions.

If they did exist, there wouldn’t be the scandalous news that almost all of the supposedly spotless senators of the past 19th Congress had made “unprecedented” billion-peso insertions in this year’s budget, as Senator Panfilo Lacson exposed last week.

Seemingly endless are the impunities, and more are pouring in by the day.

And, as with all crimes perpetrated by an aberrant ruling class, there’s a barrage of hypocritical assertions of innocence and self-serving finger-pointing, giving no other distinct impression than the predator class doesn’t really care what anyone thinks.

But then they couldn’t care less. Stocked with staggering unaccountable cash hordes, they are able to buy the services of a mercenary class of professionals — economists, lawyers, political operators, traditional media hacks, and social media consultants/trolls — to justify their predation and denigrate any attempts at accountability.

Worse, their impunity comes from the stark fact that we can’t even fully rely on threats of exile or jail, thanks to the power of a pardon by future regimes.

At any rate, all these are but a few of the challenges while we stew in anger, reach the tipping point, and dig in for the long fight.

And, even if we have renounced and perhaps even manage to tear down the predator class, tricky questions — like how can we reestablish checks, balances, countervailing power, and a sense of public purpose — lie ahead.

Until we can ably answer those difficult questions, uneasy is our sad lot.