Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David on Monday, 31 August, urged Filipinos to go beyond angry social media posts over persistent flooding and pursue collective action to demand accountability from government officials and other responsible parties.

“Perhaps we need collective citizens’ action—motorists filing complaints before regulatory agencies, communities demanding public disclosure of flood-control projects and budgets, citizens seeking legal remedies where negligence has caused injury or loss, and taxpayers insisting that public officials and private concessionaires answer for services for which we have already paid,” David said.

“Let us refuse to normalize preventable suffering. Let us demand answers. Let us demand accountability. And where the law allows it, let us act together as citizens to hold accountable those who fail in their duty to protect the public,” the prelate added.

David said Filipinos are known for their resilience in the face of disasters and natural calamities, but warned that resilience should never mean passively accepting incompetence, corruption or neglect.

“This time, let us also be defiant,” David said.

The cardinal explained that being defiant means becoming “citizens who refuse to accept as normal what should never have been allowed to become normal.”

“Defiance asks questions. Who designed this? Who built it? Who inspected it? Who maintained it? How much did taxpayers pay for it? Why does the same place flood every year? Where did the flood-control money go? Who knew the danger and failed to warn the public? And when negligence is established, who will be held accountable?” David said.

The cardinal acknowledged that climate change is real but stressed that it should not be used as an excuse for failures that could have been prevented.

He said climate change should not become an excuse “for every flooded highway, clogged drainage system, denuded watershed, unsafe manhole, failed flood-control project and preventable death.”