The public’s discoveries regarding flood control and other public works projects must have serious repercussions. Public officials caught doing bribery should not just be removed from office. They should be charged administratively and criminally.

Another consequence should be the end of “resilience” as dogma of state, business, media and church when explaining how we manage to survive multiple and worsening floods.

It turns out “resilience” looks more and more accurately a cover, a fig leaf, a diversion to hide the elaborate, multi-level, and gargantuan acts of corruption in flood control and other public works projects that supposedly help and save the public.

For instead of combing through the audit, accomplishment reports, infrastructure assessments and tests of how these multimillion and multibillion-peso projects fared, the state has for the longest time elevated the PR device of “resilience” as dogma.

People are justifiably angry because whether in Bulacan, Davao, Manila, or Ormoc, there’s no marked improvement in flood control infrastructure. Despite the state throwing lots of public money at the problem, floods continue to deluge cities and towns.

At the same time, we see contractors and their progeny unapologetically and proudly display their immense wealth before a nation of hardworking, overtaxed, regularly-flooded people. Their mansions, sports utility vehicles, and other luxury items, trips to Europe, are openly featured by journalists who fail or refuse to ask where they came from.

It is a good thing that the President seems as incensed by the public, and have personally taken steps to expose certain projects and have called on the concerned citizens to come forward with information on corruption. It is also good to see some lawmakers take the cudgels for taxpayers, by exposing perfidy and asking tough questions. A neophyte lawmaker even helped catch a district engineer in a sting operation.

As of today, only two district engineers of the Department of Public Works and Highways have been tagged in this controversy. This is obviously not enough.

Davao City is interesting because even after six years of a Duterte presidency, and after decades of having a Duterte as mayor, vice mayor or congressman, we read and see news reports of the city often deluged by flood waters.

“Public Works Undersecretary Catalina Cabral said that from 2019 to 2022, during the last three years of the former President’s term, the city received ₱51 billion just for flood control, and always far more than the proposed budget during those years’ National Expenditure Programs. For example, the city originally had a ₱4.7-billion proposed budget for flood control in 2020, but this nearly tripled to ₱13.7 billion under the General Appropriations Act,” said a newspaper report.

The city being referred to here is Davao City. Surely, Davaoeños deserve an explanation. But not just Davaoeños, because these are Philippine national funds, every Filipino is entitled to an explanation where those funds went.

Meantime, a congressman has called for an independent commission to investigate the flood control projects as well as other infrastructure projects. It is a suggestion worthy of support. But aside from retired justices and judges, engineers, accountants and lawyers, such a commission should also have as members representatives of the “resilient” sectors and ordinary taxpayers at the receiving end of these substandard and corrupt projects.

If Congress and the President would agree, and the Supreme Court would consider, they should volunteer the offices of state to further investigate the independent commission’s findings and file charges against anyone involved, especially the powerful, and to assign special courts to hear those charges.

We have done something like this about a decade ago when we as citizens took action to end pork barrel spending in the form of the Priority Development Assistance Fund and the Disbursement Acceleration Program. It is now apparent that the corrupt have found novel and worse ways to steal. Citizens must outsmart the corrupt and recover control over public funds.

For we have always been resilient, hailing as we are from peoples who lived and thrived near rivers, waterways, and seashores. To paraphrase one of the country’s top journalists, for the past years and decades, we are a people flooded not by rainwaters. We are flooded by greed.