If floodgates have mentors, we should ask who taught the class. The PDAF scam had its architects. The Unprogrammed Appropriations circus had its choreographers.

So Nosy Tarsee sifted through the syllabus for today’s P1-trillion flood control fiasco, and the name of he who might have quietly written it kept surfacing — not as a suspect but as the professor emeritus.

Before certain officials lecture the nation about accountability, they might want to revisit their own transcripts.

Rewind to 2017 and 2018. Lawmakers were already asking pointed questions about P332 billion in flood control allocations — P213 billion tucked into those two budgets, another P119 billion proposed for 2019 — for projects some legislators insisted did not exist.

A P10-billion Sorsogon infrastructure line raised eyebrows. So did a P75-billion Department of Public Works and Highways top-up. And so did up to P550 million in contracts allegedly flowing toward companies with family ties to a Cabinet official of that era.

The public spat that followed between the Cabinet official and a House leader played out in Question Hour theater, subpoenas and a Naga City hearing that generated more heat than light. The House leader’s charge: the secretary had slipped roughly P75 billion in “executive insertions” into the DPWH’s 2019 wish list, heavy on infrastructure and flood control.

The geography in question kept circling back to Sorsogon, specifically Casiguran. The genealogy involved the Cabinet official’s daughter, who married into a Sorsogon political family.

Her father-in-law, once mayor, turned out to be a major stockholder in the construction firm involved in joint ventures on Bicol road and tourism projects. The son from that family’s earlier marriage was listed as an incorporator.

The secretary, naturally, called the whole thing “illusory.” Wrong numbers. No family discussions about projects. Competitive bidding, not favoritism. The usual liturgy. The Palace, for its part, treated the House probe as noise, and the budget process limped into a re-enactment while everyone postured.

Then, conveniently, the secretary got kicked upstairs. The feud evaporated. The accuser shrugged that the moment had passed. Cases don’t disappear — they just lose their forum.