The four horsemen of the flood control apocalypse

We all know that the apocalypse, as described in the Book of the Revelation, is the final, complete and total destruction of the world. Its purveyors are four horsemen representing famine, war, calamities and pestilence. The raging imbroglio on flood control anomalies can also bring forth the total ruin of the nation. We need to pinpoint, to shame and to conscientize the four masterminds of this huge shenanigan.

The four horsemen, by analogy and metaphor, may be called the four elephants in the room, to exercise a little mercy and compassion to these scoundrels. The first horseman is the personification of the trapos belonging to political dynasties and political elite, let us just call them honorable senators and honorable congressmen who landed in Congress courtesy of unthinking voters. These voters whose votes were either bought, or their loyalty compelled, hoodwinked or coerced or cajoled by the pressures of "utang na loob," patronage and transactional politics.

The first horseman and his cohorts and co-conspirators are responsible for surreptitiously inserting into the budget multi-billion worth of pork barrel for favored members of the House and the Senate. These are intended for ghost flood control projects, for substandard bridges and highways, for repeated allocations for finished projects, for alleged maintenance or destruction of still serviceable roads so that other projects could be justified. These hideous trapos in the Senate and in the House use the secretive bicam as the platform for doing the surreptitious and treacherous insertions unknown by the plenary,

The second horseman represents the thieving bureaucrats in the government agencies, for instance, DPWH personnel, who manipulate the technical surveys and technical plans, make a mockery out of public biddings and conspire with politicians and contractors, bribe the auditors and the LGU officials so that the complete and grand conspiracy of the larceny against public funds are concocted, executed and hidden from the scrutiny of the taxpayers and the ever-trusting and gullible hoi polloi. The bureaucrats can buy Lamborghini and F0errari and can gamble and lose 300 million in one casino zafari night alone.

The third horseman represents the ostentatious and arrogant contractors who display their multi-million mansions and their 40 to 80 luxury cars and highly-prized branded umbrellas, their plate collections and their branded bags, jewelries, their luxurious foreign resignations and cruises, their helicopters and yachts that would make some billionaire taipans look poor. and impoverished. Among them are owners of small hardware transformed into conglomerates with billions worth of flood control projects. Their children go to international schools driven by chauffeurs and escorted by uniformed yayas who can later on turn state witnesses against them.

Some of these contractors are also congressmen and pretend to divest their holdings by transferring their stocks to their sons, daughters, drinking and gambling partners and even their own drivers and clerks who are given the glorified titles as COO or CEO but it is still the congressmen who control the inflows and outflows of money. Some contractors own two or three or even nine companies so that when one is suspended (just for show) by the PCAB or blacklisted by DPWH (allegedly for malice or for money), there will still be other contractors to do the dirty job.

The fourth horseman is representing many accomplices and accessories like the COA auditors who allowed payment to be made for ghost projects and did not do an honest-to-goodness post audit, did not raise any red flag despite all the palpable violations by contractors. They also include the LGU officials who receive a bundle for the projects to pass through. They also include unscrupulous certified public accountants and bookkeepers who "doctor" the books of accounts in order to lend an air of integrity to manipulated financial statements.

And lawyers too, "et tu, Brute?" (sorry to my brethren and sisters in the profession) who give aid and comfort to thieving contractors and perhaps obtain their acquittal from judges who are their frat and sorority siblings. There are rumors that our justice system is also corrupted, not just for money and for malice, but for fraternity and sorority alliances, for conflicts of interests and for unholy alliances. There are lawyers, some of them my students (I should have failed them had I known) who specialize in sensational cases and get paid handsomely to fight an unbeatable foe and turn around hopeless cases.

I have no solid evidence to back up my theories. I am not pinpointing anyone as guilty. But these are secrets that everyone knows about and yet opt to remain silent. I have chosen to speak what I believe to be the truth and I am willing to drink the cup of hemlock if circumstances call for it.