The rains came, as they always do. Three typhoons circled the archipelago and met the southwest monsoon head-on. Streets became rivers. Towns became islands. Frantic families climbed to rooftops and waited for rescue boats, a ritual repeated every time there’s a heavy downpour.

The flooding was not an act of God. It was the visible failure of a system built on theft: roads with poor drainage, rivers choked with silt because dredging contracts existed only on paper, and flood-control structures that collapsed because the steel was thin and the concrete was thinner, poured by contractors who paid their way onto government ledgers.

The nation watched the water rise and understood, correctly, that P1 trillion had gone into the pockets of government officials whom the public relied on to end the perennial scourge.

And yet the accountability the times demanded has not arrived. What took its place is a political cleansing, an impeachment fight aimed less at justice than at clearing the field before 2028.

The reason for the shift in priorities is that the floods became a metaphor no one in power wanted examined too closely, because the water exposed everyone.

Consider what developed after the Independent Commission for Infrastructure — which President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had touted as the reckoning body — folded.

Senate Bill 1512, the Independent People’s Commission measure, was filed jointly by three committees and endorsed by 16 senators back in November. It has not cleared second reading. The Senate leadership has acknowledged the chamber would not make it a priority.

The House version, proposing an Independent Commission Against Infrastructure Corruption, sits in limbo too, awaiting a plenary debate that was promised before Christmas by the Speaker.

The common thread is damning: President Marcos has certified neither bill as urgent. Without a certification, these bills will move at the pace of politics, which is to say they will not move, while the beleaguered administration attends to its own survival.

The lack of urgency is the whole story. An executive order from Malacañang cannot compel witnesses or documents the way a properly empowered commission could.

One local official who tried to raise the alarm years ago put it plainly: He had brought a thick folder of anomalous projects to a former DPWH secretary, but nothing happened.

The Ombudsman wanted to turn that same former secretary into a state witness to chase bigger fish further up the chain.

That the offer was even necessary, that prosecutors need an insider’s cooperation to see beyond the surface, showed how shallow the investigation has been. The overlords who ordered the theft, the members of Congress alleged to be involved, are still, for the most part, untouched.

What the moment requires from the President is a public, unambiguous order to investigating agencies to produce results on a visible timeline, which the public waited for in vain during the recent State of the Nation Address.

Instead, the nation is being asked to watch a different show, an impeachment trial engineered to clear the field in the run-up to 2028.

The floods exposed the rot, but the actions of those in power are meant to diffuse the outrage and let it recede quietly until the questions stop.

But they will not stop — with nature’s help.