By: Celso Thomas Fuehts
It has been said that floods are acts of God, but flood losses are largely acts of men. The flood control scandal that exploded under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. validates that claim.
Just over a year after Marcos boasted in his State of the Nation Address (Sona) that his administration built 5,500 control projects, the true state of the nation emerged when the worst flooding in the nation’s history tormented it like never before.
“More than 5,500 flood control projects have been completed and are being constructed nationwide,” Marcos declared in Filipino at his 2024 Sona which was met by applause by a predominantly pro-administration audience.
Days later, floods submerged many parts of the country including Metro Manila. It did not take long for netizens to see it as an act of God, to reveal the true state of the nation.
Photos and videos of business districts, residential areas and large swaths of agricultural land submerged in water quickly dominated social media. The scenes would be replayed many times as no less than six typhoons lashed the country in 2024 alone.
“Mother Nature fact checked your 5,500 flood control projects,” former presidential spokesperson Harry Roque posted on his Instagram account, an observation that has since gone viral as a virtual indictment of the Marcos administration.
“The worst flooding in years has exposed not only what I have called the worst presidency in our recent history. It has exposed what may well be the worst Congress as well,” wrote columnist Rigoberto Tiglao.
Tiglao said Congress should have summoned the best hydrologists, civil engineers, geologists, urban planners, dam planners and local officials to answer a simple question: why did the water go where it did?
“Congress should be examining river basins, drainage systems, siltation, watershed destruction, land subsidence, dam releases, reclamation, urban development and the thousands of disconnected flood-control projects scattered around the country,” Tiglao pointed out.
Nothing of that sort has happened. Instead, Marcos has poured precious government resources on his obsession to impeach Vice-President Sara Duterte, a shoo-in to win the elections in 2028. The distraction is not lost to most Filipinos as her rising numbers in all opinions polls is a virtual repudiation of the impeachment theater that is being imposed on them.
“Sara has no trillion flood control projects. She also has no billion insertion in the national budget. But Sara is the one being impeached,” commented TV headwriter Suzette Doctolero, summing up the sentiments of Filipinos getting increasingly cynical of the impeachment process. It won’t solve the flood control mess but holding on to power is more important to Marcos.
Buried somewhere beneath the layers of propaganda and counterpropaganda on the flood control projects controversy is the real story: the diversion of the allocation for the Official Development Assistance (ODA) in the 2024 and 2025 national budget to other projects.
Veteran legislator and Davao Rep. Isidro Ungab, who questioned the budget anomaly with former executive secretary Victor Rodriguez before the Supreme Court, pointed to the smoking gun.
“The failure of the Marcos administration to build 11 critical foreign-assisted high-impact major flood control projects including two specifically for Metro Manila which had a combined budget of P21.5 billion in 2024 and P27.5 billion in 2025 significantly undermined flood control efforts,” Ungab explained. As expected, the former House appropriations chair’s expose was kept under wraps, sunk deep in the massive cover-up resorted to by an administration fighting for survival. The country will just have to brace for more floods.
Ungab stated that the ODA funds have been removed from the National Expenditure Program for both 2024 and 2025. He disclosed that P40.2 billion (US$816.24 million) of the P49.1 billion (US$996.95 million) allocated for flood control projects in 2024-2025 through ODA funds had been diverted from its intended purpose.
Despite the impeachment noose tightening around her neck, Vice-President Duterte seems unfazed. In more ways than one, she is her father’s daughter.
While millions of Filipinos continue to hold former President Rodrigo Duterte in high regard, Vice-President Duterte is slowly revealing herself to be a better version of him, at least as far as her vocabulary is concerned.
“I’m not the real problem, the real problems are hunger, poverty, illegal drugs, criminality, terrorism, insufficient health care, quality of education, lack of infrastructure programs for disasters and many others,” she said in Filipino in an address last Sept. 18, 2024.
While lesser mortals would have long retreated in the face of the worst demolition job ever inflicted on a political rival in the nation’s history, Duterte has remained, in her own words, “unbowed.”
“So you may try to destroy me, you can skin me alive and throw my ashes to the wind, but let it be known… you will find me unbowed. I will continue to serve the Filipino people no matter the personal cost or political intrigue,” she declared nearly a year ago but even more relevant today.
Indeed, floods are acts of God, but flood losses are acts of men. With what is happening in the Philippines today, it is difficult to tell one from the other.
