Different rainfall alert

Whimsical as the thought is, I often wonder if the twisted politicians, public works officials, and contractors guilty of flawed and corrupted flood control projects get the same jolting text-blast alerts from the national disaster agency.

If they get it, imagine their unease squirming in fear of getting found out as they lie in their luxuriously soft beds each time heavy rainfall alerts blast on their pricey smartphones in the wee hours.

Imagine, too, the excruciating agony of those who were caught and are imprisoned for the flood control mess as they lie on their austere jail cots. While they won’t have their phones with them, surely their guards’ phones get the same jolting alerts that are loud enough for them to hear.

So, yes, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council alerts serve more than to urge us to save ourselves. They are an ear-piercing reminder to the accountable and the not yet accountable flood control scammers of what they’ve done.

Given this fanciful frame of mind, shouldn’t we seriously consider the suggestion that we hold elections during the flooded monsoon and typhoon season rather than during the floodless summers?

May’s balmy, lethargic days do give distinct advantages to incompetent, often over-promising politicians, their vote-buying backers, and their easily hoodwinked supporters.

But the raw experience of flooded homes and streets, horrendous traffic, crumbling infrastructure, drowned farms, evacuees, and learning-challenged school kids should finally take care of what we’ve been asking for so long: getting the right people elected.

Electing the right people is nowadays undeniably a crying need.

A need emphasized recently by Senator Panfilo Lacson’s calculation that incompetent government functionaries of the past 15 years spent a staggering P1.939 trillion, or roughly P350 million every day, on flood control projects that never were.

With flooding still very much happening, Lacson’s point is that there’s no lack of funds for flood control, only that it isn’t being spent properly, or worse, ends up in the pockets of shameless greedy officials and their families.

Corruption is, of course, the monster that gets everybody’s ire and that they want slain.

But behind the monstrous corruption lurks another tough opponent many have discounted: politics.

Politics? How does politics get into the flood control mess?

“Basta may project (So long as there is a project),” is the quick intriguing answer to the question.

Uttered by former Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson last week, he was actually talking about his frustration over how badly thought-out flood control projects got built because its political sponsors wanted it.

Speaking from experience, Singson said shady and flawed flood control projects — bereft of engineering studies, technical requirements, and even actual need — were inserted into the national budget and built at the insistence of money-grubbing politicians.

Singson, in short, was saying the other big problem isn’t only how much government is spending, but how flood control projects are selected.

And, more often than not, Singson said, badly selected flood control projects ended up unfinished, suspended, or terminated.

Singson, of course, is an engineer. Why politicians want anything built that’s actually useless isn’t his forte.

But with our familiarity with the many diseases of our dynastic politicians, saying that they can’t be cured of their “edifice complex” isn’t at all surprising.