OPINION
Why Sara’s trial and the ‘Floodgate’ probe matter
Think of the government as a massive community cooperative. We, the citizens, are the members who contribute our hard-earned money through taxes.
It is easy to scroll past the news these days. When you are trying to figure out how to stretch a tight budget for groceries, headlines about the Office of the Ombudsman filing plunder cases or the Senate opening the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte feel like noise.
It sounds like high-level politics — a game played by giants in air-conditioned rooms, far removed from the heat of our daily commute.
But these cases are not just about political rivalries. They are fundamentally about our households, our safety and our homes.
Think of the government as a massive community cooperative. We, the citizens, are the members who contribute our hard-earned money through taxes. Every time we buy a loaf of bread, load our phones, or fill up a motorcycle with gasoline, a portion goes into that shared pool. We trust our leaders to manage it like household elders — ensuring there is food on the table, the children can go to school, and the roof doesn’t leak.
Right now, the Vice President is facing severe allegations in the Senate over the misuse of public funds. Meanwhile, lawmakers and the Ombudsman are aggressively tracking down hundreds of billions of pesos tied up in the massive flood control project scandal.
We are told trillions have been spent over the years on thousands of flood mitigation projects — yet, every time a severe typhoon hits, our streets still turn into raging rivers and water enters our living rooms.
When hundreds of millions of pesos vanish into “ghost projects,” or are spent from confidential funds without receipts, it is not just a statistical error on a government spreadsheet. It is a direct subtraction from our lives.
That missing money is the public hospital that ran out of medicine when your child got sick. It is the public school that lacks chairs. Most visibly, it is the defective dike or the unbuilt drainage system that left your neighborhood underwater during the last storm, forcing your family to evacuate to a rooftop.
Watching the impeachment trial or following the Ombudsman’s investigations isn’t about picking a political side or cheering for a team. It is simply a matter of checking the receipt. It is asking: “We paid for a roof that doesn’t leak and streets that don’t flood. Where did our money go?”
If we stay quiet, we signal that it is acceptable for our hard-earned contributions to be spent in the dark while we drown in the rain. We cannot afford to look away. Talk about it over dinner, ask questions, and read beyond the political soundbites.
Demanding accountability isn’t political bickering — it is the only way to ensure that the wealth of this nation finally serves the people who build it.