Unavoidable resilience

With a teeny drop of rain in just a matter of hours or minutes, Filipino families have to defy another hardship just to survive—the flood. A flood that slowly submerges our homes, destroys parts of our communities, and once again forces the people to endure the grievous pathway of flooding just to pull through.  

As rain pours and floods fill the streets and surfaces of many homes, some unfortunate people are forced to temporarily live in unsightly evacuation centers or deal with the life-threatening disease of leptospirosis caused by rapid flooding. But one question always comes to mind: when will this end?

As we face another knackered problem this rainy season, we have to encounter an obstacle that may damage our residence, dim the lights in our homes, and may even result in death because of landslides and tornadoes. 

Furthermore, it unveils the root cause of all problems when it comes to flooding—the lack of support from our government. 

While some may think of solutions such as flood control, this solution actually turned into one of the biggest problems that we face today, or even back then—corruption. 

Last August 4, 2025, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), has allocated a PHP230.057 billion budget for the year 2025, which includes social protection, disaster response, and welfare services. Yet, it doesn’t even show solutions to many problems we experience; it only makes up the name but not the action.

In a report of the Legislative Budget Research and Monitoring Office (LBRMO) of the Senate of the Philippines, a budget has also been allocated for flood control, estimating PHP900 billion in the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) which was later involved in a corruption quarrel against the contractors of the DPWH particularly the two notorious names for the alleged corruption in the flood control projects, Pacifico “Curlee” Discaya and Cezarah “Sarah” Discaya. 

The two sketchy names who own nine companies cornered P207.25 billion worth of flood control and other infrastructure contracts from the DPWH from 2016 to 2025, according to Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson. That's 21% of the P1 trillion (P1,000 billion) misappropriated from DPWH over the last decade. 

Personally, I think the couple doesn’t even have a conscience anymore, considering that they flaunt their so-called “hard-earned” money by being a contractor of one of the most allocated budget agencies of the government. 

Moreover, Sarah Discaya, the wife, parades their collection of luxury cars worth nearly PHP200 million and even an Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) summer bag costing around PHP100,000 while ordinary, unfortunate people continue to suffer from the unfulfilled flood control projects that were promised to ease flooding and the recurring impact of typhoons.

Also, I came across the CNN presidential debate on February 28, 2022, in which Former Vice President Leni Robredo was asked: “In relation to corruption, what is the first government agency you will investigate?” She wrote her answers on a whiteboard—the Bureau of Customs, Bureau of Immigration, Bureau of Internal Revenue, and, most strikingly, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

Which later on piqued the crowd’s reasoning against the flood control projects of the DPWH, as Former Vice President Leni Robredo was giving us signs all along, yet, we didn’t listen. But now, it all makes sense—we were, all along, flooded by the debris of corruption. 

At this time, when we are judged for how much we rely on our government, it only states the obvious: it is their job. They are elected to serve, protect, and address issues in our nation—not to be a hindrance to solutions. We must dictate integrity, transparency, and honesty to the people we choose to be the leaders of our future. But the question remains: are we ready to flee from drowning in a corrupt nation or is this gonna be an everyday truth to accept?