There used to be an extremely cruel method for punishing sinners in Medieval Europe. The poor victims were “quartered and drawn,” hands and feet tied to four different horses. On signal, horses tore the body apart.
It was, to say the least, a rather unpleasant way to die.
Being quartered and drawn is how I begin imagining our nation these days. Since the flood control scandal broke out in all its obscene glory, natural calamities have visited in nearly continuous stream. Flooding events, earthquakes up and down the archipelago’s spine and, finally, threats of eruptions from some of our most gorgeous volcanos.
It is all coincidental, of course. Nature is not conspiring to destroy us. We are pretty much doing a good job at killing our nation.
The job we are doing involves ultimately denying our archipelago the means to support the population it now has. We hinder trade and commerce because of bad logistics. Our public works are weak and fragile.
The great civilizations built things to last forever: the pyramids, the majestic Roman architectural feats and the Great Wall. To this day, the nations descended from these civilizations continue to draw economic gains from what their ancestors built thousands of years before.
By comparison, a DPWH flood control project is not designed to survive the next bout with rain. “Substandard” does not even begin to describe the mettle of what was built – if it was built at all. The structures that are supposed to hold back floods melt at first blush.
There is an unmistakable element of the demonic in the ruthlessness with which the looting of public works funds was done. They felt no pity for the plight of poor inundated communities. They felt no injury done when lives are threatened by poor infrastructure.
There is corruption in all areas of public works. The sheer focus on public works projects the past few years has nothing to do with the urgency of building dikes and diversions. What drew the focus – along with immense appetite for looted money – was the potential efficiency of extracting the loot.
First, the loot was calculated in percentages. Percentages are always higher in horizontal projects because so much of the shortchanging could be hidden underground. In the case of the flood control projects, the looting progressed until the entire money was stolen by way of ghost projects.
Everything was plain paper work. The projects’ designs did not exist. The locations were fudged. No inspections happened. Contractor firms were rented out. Money was moved in bulk. It became possible to make taxpayer money disappear without trace and pocketed without trail.
The same sort of progression happened leading to the Napoles scandal before. The scam artist in this case focused on “soft” projects that disappeared with use – such as seriously diluted fertilizers. Soon enough the whole enterprise progressed from a 50 percent to a 100 percent looting rate.
The looting was so efficient, the money was being shared even before the ink on the national budget dried. Politicians even took out “cash advances” on their accounts with Napoles. The Patroness of Excess was ever generous.
With a 100 percent loot rate, any minor exposure to daylight could make the operation blow up in an instant. In the case of Napoles, a mistreated employee transformed into a whistleblower.
In the case of the flood control projects, everything simply became a matter of connecting the dots. Hundreds of billions of taxpayer money suddenly flowed into flood control. More and more, the quality of the documentation declined. Soon, projects contracted out and fully paid could not be found.
Meanwhile, politicians began displaying their wealth a little more ostentatiously. A lusting for European handbags broke out among the ladies of the House. The gentlemen developed a taste for exquisite timepieces capable only of telling time.
The warnings were made suitably early. Lonely voices warned about how the national budget was mangled three years in a row, the worse being the 2025 budget. We were warned about the Romualdez leadership at the House padding the whole cash transfer game in aid of the midterm elections. It turned out, from its scale, the money was being amassed for the decisive 2028 elections.
And so, it seems, we simply wandered into this rabbit hole: trillions of pesos wasted, futures stolen, communities penalized and public health abandoned.
In Cebu, we are told, the flood control projects aggravated the flooding situation. The province never before saw flash flooding so intense as they did earlier this week.
The same is observed in many other places where hit-and-run flood control projects were undertaken. What were supposed to be solutions magnified to problems.
Corruption warps all things. Mostly, it warps all sense of right and wrong.
The seductions of easy money surely warped our infrastructure roadmap. We are not so sure this map does not point us to hell.
This month, there will be more protest actions organized – although more have become more doubtful of their utility. Somehow, people are hoping there might be some great awakening among all our people so that we mend our ways and build a truly caring community.
That is a bit too biblical. More likely, I feel we will just continue stumbling until we find provisional remedies. Our perspective distorted by those who lead us mainly to conserve their hold on power.