Ground zero fury
The province is now ground zero of public anger, and this shift, understandable in its origins, carries risks that those in power would be unwise to ignore.
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The province is now ground zero of public anger, and this shift, understandable in its origins, carries risks that those in power would be unwise to ignore.
Great political upheavals in recent memory, from the first EDSA uprising to its successors, have unfolded along the avenues of Metro Manila, where a restive and largely middle-class citizenry could gather within sight of the leadership it sought to unseat.
The present anti-corruption movement is showing signs of drifting toward a different center of gravity, to Bulacan, which received a disproportionate share of flood control funds but now suffers the worst of the floods those funds were supposed to prevent.
The province is now ground zero of public anger, and this shift, understandable in its origins, carries risks that those in power would be unwise to ignore.
Manila-centered revolts drew their character from the class that led them: a middle class that had grievances but also property, employment and reputations to protect, and therefore tended to march with a sense of limits and dispersed when its demands were met or its patience was spent.
This social stratum is inclined, once a change of leadership has been secured, to return to its regular life — which appears to be what has brought us to where the nation is now.
Bulacan gives no such assurance, since the people who have to wade through floodwaters to demand accountability are farmers, fisherfolk, students and parishioners whose losses are neither abstract nor recoverable.
Their anger, rooted in their damaged homes, ruined harvests and drowned livelihoods, does not subside merely because a resignation has been announced and a few officials have been charged.
It matters, moreover, that their grievance is so concrete. While a middle-class protest in the capital may be animated by outrage over corruption as a principle, the protest in Bulacan is fueled by corruption as lived experience, by communities forced to endure the consequences of abuse in the most tangible way possible — standing in floodwater.
Such a human element is far harder to satisfy with symbolic concessions, so a government cannot be forgiven with a well-timed speech or a Cabinet reshuffle.
The province seethes, and its frustration grows each rainy season, reminding those afflicted with the curse of the water of the grand theft of funds that would have improved their situation.
The substandard river wall in Baliwag, which crumbled on inspection, is a monument to brazen government hypocrisy and callousness.
Whereas a Manila rally is an event, a Bulacan campaign is a process that can escalate. Should the reclamation for the New Manila International Airport in Bulakan, which critics said displaces fishers and destroys mangroves, become fused with the flood control grievance, the coalition of the aggrieved would broaden.
What the nation is witnessing is a movement that has at its emotional core the drowned province.
A protest that draws its energy from the masses is more vulnerable than its middle-class counterpart to opportunists who would harness it for ends unrelated to accountability.
A suffering and disillusioned group is easier to mobilize behind whoever promises relief, and the very authenticity of its grievance becomes the instrument by which it may be captured.
It would be a mistake to treat Bulacan as merely another locality to be placated with inspections and assurances.
The province is the place where a national scandal acquired physical form.
Accountability will have to be visibly delivered to the people who stood in the water and endured the consequences. They are no longer looking only at who stole the funds.
The rage is now directed at whoever allowed the flooding to persist, and at the larger question of whether those responsible can still claim to govern.
