Opening a can of worms, and what end game?

At a dinner I attended recently, the conversation moved on to the current brouhaha about ghost flood control projects; and how so many were scampering around now to don a white gown or suit, look holier than thou, and hope that none of the mud being slung lands on them.

- PHILIP CU UNJIENG

From contractors and their children, to senators and congressmen, and their wives or husbands, it was like one needed a daily updated score sheet and list of performers; to stay abreast of what was going on, who was being targeted on media (mainstream and social), and who was issuing denials, invoking silence, calling in sick, or fleeing the country.

With so much buckshot flying in the air, it was funny that so many at the dinner had even forgotten that all this media frenzy originated with our President’s SONA (State of the Nation Address) of July 28, when he referred to flood control projects, and said that so many of them were failures, riddled with substandard work, or worse, figments of the imagination (guni-guni). His promise to investigate, and hold people accountable, was met with raucous cheering at the time. Whether that was ironic, given that the ones cheering may have been beneficiaries of this systemic failure of government-funded delivery of service is up to you to decide. But that was the proverbial ‘opening of the can of worms’. The lid of that can was blown open when our President visited the Bulacan project that turned out to be the ‘figment of the imagination’ he had forecasted.