Stop selling the future

When a road collapses in the rain, or a flood devastates a community that should have been protected by a billion-peso flood control project, the question is no longer whether corruption is involved—it is how many lives paid the price.

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For decades, flood control projects in the country have served as convenient vessels for corruption. Masked as public service, these projects become money pits—endless cycles of substandard infrastructure, inflated costs, brazen kickbacks, and at worst ghost projects. Investigations are launched, exposés aired, and occasionally, a conviction follows. But the rot remains.

Why?

Because corruption is not just an act committed by a few; it is a cycle sustained by many. And it begins either with our innocent or complicit vote.

Every election cycle, the pattern is painfully familiar: candidates hand out cash, rice, or promises, and many voters accept these. Justifications for doing so are numerous. But the painful truth is: a vote sold to the corrupt is a future surrendered. When we accept money in exchange for our vote, we are complicit in the betrayal that follows. We hand over power to people whose loyalty lies not with the public good but with profit.