By Robert B. Roque, Jr.
The scandal over ghost and substandard flood control projects has finally forced President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to order lifestyle checks on Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) officials.
Billions have been squandered on structures that collapse at the first heavy rain, canals that were never dug, and embankments abandoned halfway. Now we are drowning — literally — in the corruption that was cemented, padded, chopped, and paid for with our taxes.
Marcos’s order may sound bold, but it is also late as the flooding gets worse in almost every corner of the country. Okay, so the President has finally cut DPWH Secretary Manuel Bonoan loose from his Cabinet, but then, what?
Unless the President digs deeper into the full ecosystem of corruption — from congressmen who lobby and pocket, to DPWH district engineers who chop projects into P150-million slices to keep control, or the regional engineers with the P400-million nod per project, up to undersecretaries who “tend” to the billion-peso deals — this will remain a political stunt rather than a purge.
Former BIR chief Kim Henares was right years ago: to catch the corrupt, follow the children. No minor can honestly afford Chanel bags worth the salary of a Metro Manila worker in 31 months. Yet here they are with no shame — contractors’ daughters and politicians’ sons — flaunting designer clothes and Dubai or European holidays on TikTok and Instagram.
These “nepo babies” have become living billboards of plunder, exposing with their lavish lifestyles what their parents refuse to declare in their SALNs.
This isn’t just greed, it’s systemic theft, according to Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong. He has long described this DPWH racket, and more recently, detailed it as a hierarchy of chop-chop: district engineers carving projects below P150 million to rig the bidding, regional engineers with P400 million at their discretion, and national officials colluding with congressmen who act as both contractors and lawmakers. It’s a carousel of self-dealing, where every grease payment inflates the cost until the project either collapses or is never built at all.
The result is cruelly visible today. Floods swallow homes, landslides bury lives, and roads turn into rivers because the projects that should have protected us were ghosted by corruption. Every washed-out community is a receipt of theft; every death in the storm is blood on the hands of those who siphoned funds into luxury condos, Hermes bags, and imported cars.
The rage of taxpayers is justified — enough with cosmetic lifestyle checks. If Marcos is serious, let the trail follow the nepo babies, strip away the dynasties’ cover, and prosecute without mercy. Otherwise, we, the citizens, will continue drowning in floods as this government allows the worst of politicians and their contractor buddies to float in a sea of cash.
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