A deluge of greed

It's the biggest syndicated looting of the treasury—the plunder of P1 trillion of the P2-trillion flood control money in the last 15 years (2011 to 2025).

- TONY LOPEZ

Of the P2 trillion, over P1 trillion, 53 percent, came during 2023 to 2025, the first three years of the current presidency.

The systematic stealing was done by top and low-ranking officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH); by greedy, corrupt and incompetent private contractors; by their cohorts in the Senate and in the House, and by other government people. The lost P1 trillion could have rescued five million Filipinos from poverty. P1 trillion is also 2.3x the P440 billion needed by DepEd to solve the classroom shortage, 165,000 units.

The larceny is so crude, brazen, premeditated, massive and excessive one wonders why people, with every weapon of mass protest at their command, are not even out in the streets—to demand accountability, punishment, retribution, karma or even revenge—physical, legal, moral and spiritual. Why? Have our people been so inured to such scale of corruption—petty, primordial or spectacular—as to suffer in silence and quiet indifference?

Where is the Catholic Church, for centuries the symbol of the true, good, moral and spiritual? Where is civil society?

Where is the ombudsman, the only person in this world who, motu proprio, on mere suspicion or gossip, can suspend, malign or oust a government person from his post and perk, without evidence and without due process? Where is the Supreme Court, the only agency in the entire government which can declare anyone and any entity has been abusive or gone out of bounds—based on news articles that never appeared or were never published?

Indeed, as Juliet was wont to ask, "Where art thou, Romeo?" Where is my beloved lady justice?