We are a nation with a short memory span—a flaw currently on full display.

In the Philippines, the cycle of the seasons is often mirrored by a cycle of scandals. When the monsoon rains arrive and municipalities are submerged, the public outcry over flood control reaches a fever pitch. Billions of pesos are questioned, “ghost projects” are decried, and legislative inquiries dominate the national consciousness. Yet, as soon as the floodwaters recede and the sun shines, these controversies evaporate from the national agenda.

Newer controversies have taken center stage: the tale of Atong Ang’s missing sabungeros; the caricatures of the Chinese President that triggered debates between the so-called Makabayans and “Chinators” regarding the West Philippine Sea; Vice President Sara Duterte’s declaration of her 2028 presidential bid; and now, the confirmation of charges against former President Rodrigo Duterte at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged crimes against humanity. Amidst this noise, the flood control scandals have faded into oblivion.

This “short-circuiting” of public memory is not merely a social accident; it is a profound systemic failure that sabotages the country’s drive for accountability. This is not a first. The Pharmally scandal, the DepEd laptop controversy, and countless other corruption issues have been pushed into the deep recesses of public consciousness, buried under newer, louder headlines.

The forgetting of flood control scandals follows a predictable political script. Throughout late 2024 and 2025, the Philippines witnessed a reckoning after reports surfaced that a handful of contractors had cornered billions in flood mitigation funds. There were high-profile Senate investigations, lifestyle checks on officials, and even a “Trillion Peso March.” However, as the news cycle shifted toward the 2028 elections, the fiasco began its descent into the archives of unpunished grievances.

This cultural amnesia is often a survival mechanism for a public exhausted by a moral ecology that habitually blames the poor for a lack of discipline while maintaining a high tolerance for systemic corruption. Corruption has become so normalized that it is viewed as an inevitable part of the Philippine political landscape. The public grows tired and stops expecting results—the greatest enemy of transparency. When citizens believe nothing will change, they stop demanding it.

Furthermore, the impact on accountability is devastating. Transparency is only useful if it leads to consequences. In the Philippines, the gap between exposure and conviction is a punchline; it is common for scandals to die a “natural death” by being forgotten. The legal process is so arduous, and the standard of “proof beyond reasonable doubt” is interpreted so strictly for the powerful, that acquittals are the norm. When a scandal is forgotten, impunity becomes the default setting, emboldening officials to continue the cycle.

The cost of this collective forgetting is measured in the unnecessary suffering of Filipinos. Every peso lost to a “ghost” flood control project is a peso that could have prevented a family from losing their home to the next typhoon. By allowing these scandals to fade, the country effectively defunds its own future. While initiatives like the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) or the digitization of procurement exist, they remain temporary reliefs without sustained public demand to institutionalize them.

To break this cycle, the Philippines must transition from a culture of outrage to a culture of audit. Accountability should not be a seasonal reaction to a storm; it must be a permanent feature of governance. Until the “infrastructure of plunder” is replaced by an infrastructure of persistent memory—where the names of corrupt contractors and officials are remembered long after the streets have dried—the drive for transparency will remain as stalled as a project on a flooded highway.

Genuine change requires more than “mahiya naman kayo” rhetoric. It requires a public that refuses to let the truth wash away with the tide.