Rising Waters in the Philippines
Literally and figuratively, the Philippines seems to be up to its neck in water nowadays. Somehow things have come to a point where even the most apolitical seem to have noticed that it can no longer continue the same way as before, even the way of many millenia.
Some modified form of the old social contract between local rulers and their subjects, now called voters, survived throughout King Philipp II making them all his sworn underlings but otherwise allowing them business as usual to America introducing a form of democracy. Public education, media and migration waves gradually made the people more able to inform themselves and communicate with one another (many didn’t speak more than their local language in the early 1900s) but didn’t necessarily make them wiser or more empowered.
There are theories that societies tend to evolve towards a “local optimum” until they are forced to change by external forces. Possibly this point has been reached in the Philippines.
The original conditions of the archipelago were natural abundance and low population density. Calamities were easier for the small communities of then to bounce back from. Filipinos of today live with higher population density, less places to go to and more to lose in terms of investment in terms of modern amenities and infrastructure. At the same time, the ruling classes are less dependent on the ruled than before, not needing to care as much.
Rituals of public shaming of leaders like People Power before, House Hearings these days might have ancient roots back to the time when the rulers depended on the ruled to at least grow food for them. The ruled could move upstream to form their own communities in case rule became onerous, a practice for instance Bikol remontados continued into colonial times. Now the old social contract of the rulers giving back to the ruled seems to have broken.
Even the implied rules of political patronage by which those who helped a candidate most got positions, those who were in the entourage got jobs while the masses got “ayuda” – in some cases a birthday cake every year – don’t seem to really satisfy people anymore if some have luxury cars that would make people in rich parts of Munich jealous while many struggle to get to work or school via rising floodwaters – or in the province, across swollen rivers.
Modern life also means more to lose, whether it is a car or appliances ruined by floodwaters, or the cost of city infrastructure that has to be rebuilt, and buildings that need to be repaired. Moving upstream for a while like the barangays of old and rebuilding after the storm does not work anymore, especially if even upstream/uphill places like Quezon City flood nowadays. Both middle classes and working classes are affected by very obvious challenges by now.
Every society responds differently to how water challenges them. The Dutch became way more than how the Romans described their ancestors, as miserable people living neither on water nor on land, by forming grassroots-based “waterschappen” or water boards centuries ago. Egyptian Pharaohs regulated the Nile to control floods and have thriving agriculture as religiously justified God-Kings. The Philippines will hopefully figure out its own way that fits its unique culture, modifying it as needed for modern challenges. It can thrive – or languish.
(Picture created using BING Image Creator)
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
Reposting this because we are worse than beavers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-20315417#:~:text='In%20their%20nature‘,%22Are%20you%20beaver%20ready?%22
I wonder how all the corrupt government officials here do it. Do they lie in bed at night excited about the piles of pesos coming when they negotiate a commission with their pet contractor, as if they earned the right to the money by being so powerful and special? They know no guilt? Their whole character is sick, seems to me.
the internal convo of corrupt govt officials probly goes like this: hallelujah, the president has signed the budget! now we can rest and enjoy our kickbacks.
the president’s economic team who reportedly went over the budget line by line with the president, how come they had not seen the insertions, did bersamin?
https://tribune.net.ph/2025/09/20/carpio-says-flood-control-corruption-worse-than-martial-law-era
I wonder how they will jail so many high ranking officials. They’ll have to acquire a hotel as a minimum security prison. They can fund it by getting the money back.
my friends in other countries say they too run out of jail space. sweden rented jail in estonia and send swedish criminals to serve their term in estonian jail. all their expenses paid by swedish govt.
here in philippines, our criminals are housed like sardines. in bilibid there is cobol still. rich criminals got better accommodation and preferred treatment, their families outside give expensive gifts and whatnots to families of prison officials. have money, will live in comfort. rich prisoners even got medical furloughs even if they are not sick, given time off for therapy, recreation in simpler term that may last several days.
those detained served detention in camp crame. alice guo is there, sara discaya probly too.
The corruption inspired by Janet Napoles pales in comparison to the infrastructure scheme. Hers took two, her and the government official. In this case there are more partnerships, not just the Discayas. Maybe 5 to 10 contractors and more if they get to the little guys who cooperate to get work. The partnerships on the government side are even more. It is quite astounding to see the corrupt underbelly of local politics get put on the front pages. It requires a lot of bank branches as well to carry it off. Tracking the money should be possible if it is considered a form of money laundering.
The New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa is scheduled for closure by 2028, with the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) implementing a phased transfer of inmates to regional prisons and new facilities to decongest the facility. This initiative is part of a broader plan to modernize the penal system, and after its closure, the NBP site is slated to be converted into a commercial hub. Reasons for the ClosureOvercrowding: The NBP is severely congested, with a population far exceeding its capacity, which leads to health issues and other problems. Location: It is no longer practical to have a major detention center in Muntinlupa, a city that now has many posh residential areas. Modernization: Closing the facility is a key part of BuCor’s five-year plan to modernize and reform the Philippine penal system, which began in 2023. The Transfer PlanPhased Approach: Inmates are being transferred in batches from 2024 to 2027 to regional prisons across the Philippines. New Regional Facilities: BuCor is also building new regional prisons to house the transferred inmates, ensuring humane conditions and rehabilitation programs continue. Supermax Prison: A new high-security “supermax” prison is planned to open in Sablayan, Occidental Mindoro, to accommodate high-risk offenders. The Future of the Site Commercial Hub: After the complete closure of the prison, the NBP site is planned to be converted into a commercial hub, with part of the land being leased out.Ongoing EffortsInmate Transfers: As of early 2025, transfers to various regional penal farms, such as Iwahig, San Ramon, and Davao, are ongoing to reduce the population at NBP. Reforms: In addition to the physical moves, BuCor is implementing reforms, including new protocols for guards, such as body cameras and no-pocket uniforms, to improve monitoring and prevent contraband.
3yrs away is 2028, in the meantime, it is still nbp, new bilibid prison, summat ang hantong. I am presuming inmates are recruited to provide (paid) labor as pahinantes in the building of the supermax prison. at heto na naman, medyo kabado ako. just who is the builder of the supermax prison, it had better not be the discayas or any of the blacklisted builders!
Oh no
bucor chief catapang jr had better start looking over his shoulder and check the supermax project, else he will be left holding the baby. even deped sec angara complained that 1000 classrooms made and been turned over by dpwh proved to be not complete and could not be used. the classrooms have no electricity and yet to be painted.
Unfortunately there is more. Overpasses with promises escalators and elevators to make them pwd usable is all a waste. Plus the new roads completely broken and replaced with asphalt. Farm to pocket roads
There is always a flurry of road-building during the year before elections. Construction firms pay local officials here to get projects. It is standard procedure. It takes years but the roads here are getting wider and better all the way up the mountain sides. There are flood protection walls but I wonder as to the quality. Bridges still get damaged. But Naval, Biliran must surely be approaching city status. We have McDonalds here now and a Gaisano Mall under construction. Ferry service has improved. There are now daily passenger ships from Naval to Cebu, a four hour snooze and you’re there. Getting goods onto the island is the biggest challenge when roads are out. Storms come in regularly. Life on the edge. It’s a lifestyle though. I like it. I think most here do.
It is good that there are satisfactory projects left.
Still with the LGU once the mayor is made to look in the other direction all will be messy.
isko moreno, mayor of manila in 2020 has got himself a money pit! literally. the pumping station at tondo started in 2018 and completed in 2020 has not done its job but has worsened the flood. a proverbial money pit that constantly needed millions of maintenance money that new dpwh vince dizon thought highly dysfunctional. a pumping station that does not work needs millions of money to maintain it! haha, yeah, right, millions of money to keep it unworkable forever.
isko moreno would well be right, no ghost projects in manila, only highly dysfunctional project.
some mayors are funny.
LOL, funny not-funny.
As Manolo Quezon wrote, there is “malakas” and “mahina” in that the strong love to bend the rules, to show they’re several tiers special than even the richest man in town.
Ah, that’s the concept. I’d opine that it runs down to lower levels of government with citizens being without power having to pay fixers or other nuisance fees to keep the lower levels properly paid. So it is not just at the top. It’s anywhere someone has authority.
There is even a culture of it being a flex to be somehow close to whoever is powerful – at all levels.
Though now there is a bit of a reckoning (at times a bit of a witch hunt) towards a number of celebrities and their connections to trapos and nepo babies. Unsurprisingly, the lowest-hanging fruit are the most targeted, in this specific case the last batch of Pinoy Big Brother, especially Shuvee Etrata, not that I find her sympathy for Rodrigo Duterte and her obvious friendship to Kitty Duterte “cool”, but she is small fry.
P.S. some context for those who don’t know.
https://x.com/minminbuys/status/1970147488817676581 thread about PBB housemates and their nepo baby connections
https://x.com/jjharmonyyy/status/1970100524717597176 specifically about Shuvee Etrata
As we have presumably Manila-centric socmed feeds, I suspect there will be more sympathy for her in Joey Nguyen’s feed which has more Visayan content.
I don’t for instance see the DDS influencers Joey mentioned and especially how they are commenting NOW, what crowd they are reaching.
P.P.S. the 2025 Pinoy Big Brother winner has made a statement
all well and good, but a lot of Filipinos are barking up the wrong tree – again.
https://x.com/mikslmnc/status/1970364846215700698
They must either be alcoholic or sleeping pills addicts
“Modern life also means more to lose . . .”
That’s true, isn’t it. Wealth brings an increased money-accountability for screw-ups like getting caught, and reduced tolerance for risk. So normal people go straight. Crooks are increasingly relegated to those of bent character. The Philippines has two pertinent qualities: (1) It’s getting richer so more people are aware and care (may or may not be a critical mass; we’ll see), and (2) It’s got a whole lot of people of bent character. President Marcos has given a weed whacker to the Infrastructure Commission and we’ll see how sharp the blades are in coming weeks.
Not just wealth, development in general. I recall passing through villages in Batangas in the 1970s, coming from a summer family beach layover, where the evening lighting still was oil lamps as USAID-funded electrification hadn’t reached them yet. The norm for people with computers even in the mid-1980s was to have an uninterruptible power supply as brownouts and irregular voltage were the norm in Metro Manila from the 1970s-1980s.
If a storm hits nowadays, there are electrical masts to be repaired, if there was a flood there are appliances that are damaged, cars if they weren’t taken to higher ground on time, and yes the floods come faster nowadays, with little time to react properly. People who have worked for years in call centers or Saudi Arabia to buy that stuff are of course not amused. Not even those that might still romanticize an Amorsolo idyll Philippines will dare call those people materialistic now.
Yes, not just wealth. Achievement, too.
we prepared for contingencies, have drills and exercises and more or less ready come what may. we are located in the pacific, notorious not just for super storms but horrible weather too. and still we are anxious each time the wind blows harder, the sky darkened and there is announcement to evacuate. we are ready and we have emergency stocks, hospitals are prepared, schools, buildings and offices battened down. pero kabado pa rin kami, and some of us are traumatized and nervous wrecks.
materials goods can be replaced, not so lost lives.
Drills
What Countries near Rusdsa are doing is priorising military training.
In Venezuela, the leadership is asking Citizens to prepare to defend their land, videos of arming civilians but said to be fake news by the opposition.
Maybe the magnitude only but there are Maduro loyalists and those worried.
closer to home, taiwan is giving leaflets to its citizen so they know what to do (aside from panicking) in case china did take taiwan by force.
in cebu, we have earthquake drills, we still have not forgotten the earthquake that happened in neighboring bohol and the devastation it caused. all that tremor and deep fissures in the ground, cracked building, burst water pipes, etc. people panicking, dogs barking, total mayhem.
now, we see warehouses stocked with relief goods to be distributed in times of flood. also stocked are inflatable rubber boats with motors, oars when boats run out of gas. we immediately know which evac center to go, and to keep everyone safe, listen for further news report on radio, or keep eye on emergency texts and updates.
those who can afford to stock medicine kits, have ready supply of antibiotics in case there is leptospirosis. at the 1st sign of fever after being submerged in flood water, a precautionary dose of antibiotics is recommended as prophylaxis.
Taiwan is tops with Civil Defense.
Ph must prepare not just for evacuation of pinoys but aldo withTaiwanese and other nationals
Such a strange time we do live in. A president who was a product of his times now has to deal with the culture of rackets and impunity his old man and like-minded politicians had created.
It’s fascinating for sure. History is never dull as it rolls out with us.
I am presuming president bong marcos now has deeper appreciation of what common tao is undergoing. and he has 1st hand experience of what a violent riot can do right within close proximity of malakanyang palace. some of the trillion peso rioters even thought of burning the palace but were stopped at the bridge and ended up burning a truck and several parked vehicles. if this is not a wake up call for the president, I dont know what is!
There is a political theory of the “Revolution of rising expectations.” That is to say, as people accumulate more personal wealth and material things, they feel a need to protect that “resource,” and increasingly expect more of leaders to provide access and protection to those expectations.
In all my years of travel and staying in the Philippines, I’ve found that outside of metropolitans Filipinos form relatively isolated and self-contained communities. All the while admiring, perhaps even envying those more “rich” and “sophisticated” in far away distant places whether that place be Manila, then later Cebu, the US, then Japan and South Korea, now China, or the Europe in general. A big game changer I think, is the dual introduction of cheap Android mobile phones and cellular internet that can be bought with installments and a per-session load to access a wider world. Smartphones have permeated even to the furthest provincial bukid. I’ve even met people squatting in ditches beside canals, whose house barely qualified as a house being built out of bamboo poles draped with tarpaulin sheets, yet the whole family would sit under the moonlight devoid from streetlights, faces lit up by the glow of little screens.
Expectation can also arise from seeing a window into the outside world, using smartphones in today’s Philippines. The local official’s excuses why they cannot do this or that is no longer easily accepted when a Filipino can see videos and pictures of other countries seemingly being run better.
Back in the USSR, Levi’s 501 jeans were banned early on as a symbol of capitalism. Other famous symbols of Americanism like Coke and McDonalds were also similarly banned. French leftist philosopher Régis Debray, who was a personal friend of the Bolivian Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, once said “There is more power in rock music and blue jeans than in the entire Red Army.” Levi’s were smuggled across the Berlin Wall in the tens of thousands of pairs, further popularized by millions of peoples behind the Iron Curtain watching Bruce Springsteen’s 1988 East Berlin concert on their Rubin TV sets. Coke was permitted by the Soviet authorities in 1979; no doubt due to control the already rampant smuggling activity of colored sugar water. McDonalds opened in Red Square to great fanfare in 1990. Soviet authorities tried their damndest to suppress and shape a narrative of the squalor of the Western inner city, compared to the “equality” of the communist system. But when Soviet citizens watched newsreels and personal films quietly passed from hand-to-hand, they saw those “poor Americans” wearing Levi’s jeans, drinking Coke, and eating McDonalds, items that were unattainable by most Soviets at the time.
Today many Filipinos use the window provided by the Internet and social media as entertainment. Most Filipinos are not well equipped to discern between disinformation and the truth as they hit the “like” and “share” buttons on memes. Perhaps over time, the truth will break through, examples of better ways to do things seen elsewhere will be apparent, and expectations will rise along with coinciding demands for better futures.
What I like to look at on the side is how the evolution of transport and communication (as well as literacy) changed the situation of the Philippines.
1. Suez Canal opening in 1869 and the telegraph line to Manila (from HK via Pangasinan) in the early 1880s made a world of difference to the islands. Before that, advances like modern sailing ships and later steamships (a) made trade in agricultural goods like sugar and tobacco possible (and increased demand for abaca) and (b) finally allowed Governor Claveria to clear the Visayan sea of pirates from Mindanao with steam gunboats. Electricity and phones by the 1890s.
2. In the 1920s probably just 20% of Filipinos were literate, hard to estimate well as the American censuses of then was more focused on the populations already in the cities. That figure had reached maybe 75% by the early Third Republic thanks to schools built in the time of Quezon. The old Filipinos raised in the Third Republic like the sonny, NHerrera and the late Edgar Lores were clearly shaped by the educational system of that time.
3. Transistor radio ownership increased to over 90% by the early 1970s. Our labandera had a battery-operated one and listened to soap operas all day. Serious electrification of the provinces started ONLY in the late 1960s with USAID assistance.
4. Good old offset “moskito press” and Radyo Bandido as well as towards the end Radyo Veritas fueled EDSA Uno. A major event in the February revolution was the shoot out along and recapture of the transmission tower of ABS-CBN, which had been closed during Martial Law. Many households were already with TVs, many of them color, so it was to be their heyday. Cell phones were a craze already in the 1990s among those who could afford them. EDSA Dos was called into action by text.
5. The era of blogs closely followed by the early Facebook era. Both agitation against Ondoy floods as well as pork barrel happened there. Twitter also rose. Free data of course made it easier for anyone to access Facebook, but read only headlines or memes by around 2015. All this led to today..
So we have people whose (great-)grandparents lived in the bukid, often only speaking their own regional language like an old lady I encountered in Cebu in 1975 who spoke neither English nor Tagalog, had no electricity or experienced the advent of getting TVs after having listened only to battery radio, finding out about a world which they lack the coordinates to, and very susceptible to disinformation as a result. And there was this article by me from 2023:
Yes, communications and the exchange of information seem to be key to the development of a state and that state’s economy. Transport can be viewed as a facilitation of communications, as is internal and external trade. Projection of military power, often with the essential goal of securing trade, can also be seen as ultimately preserving communications to influenced areas further away.
One of the first Acts of Congress by the Second Continental Congress before the US even won the American Revolution was to create the US Post Office, which was the mass communication method of that day. Individual US states recognized early on the great value in building government-maintained roads to connect the network of private roads that existed beforehand. The hand-built Erie Canal (that is about half the length of the Philippine) was probably one of the more instrumental pieces of communication that tied the early US together more cohesively.
I was told that until the advent of cheap transistor radios in the Philippines, even provinces closer to Manila were remarkably isolated. The expansion of broadcast television on 10″ mini TVs were probably the first time the masses saw how life was like in other places of the Philippines. Mindanao and Sulu must’ve seemed like quasi-autonomous countries at that point. Free Facebook, which many Filipinos called the “Internet,” for better or for worse played a critical role in speeding up communication in the Philippines.
Sometimes I think a great benefit for the Philippines is the ease of access to modern information, including examples from other countries about how to do things. But on the other hand the other sharp edge of the sword that may be harmful is the feeling the Philippines should jump immediately to the last step without going through any of the former steps, then the subsequent defeatism. The Philippines often mistakes the rapid development of her neighbors as those neighbors jumping ahead somehow, perhaps with great amounts of American help which some feel the Philippines deserves *more*, but not recognizing that those neighbors did in fact do the previous steps just in a faster fashion since examples are available to speedrun from.
Access to communication is one thing, but without understanding that received information one may end up more confused than one started off.
people need some kind of structure to process information, something I tackled in below article from 5 years (and a day) ago:
Educated Filipinos will often be nitpicky and dogmatic (yes, Carpio can also be like that hehe) because that is how the educational system (I did criticize the friars there, in the same line as Rizal, with the caveat that the ones in the Philippines were mostly mediocre, I just noticed a jibe at that a week ago re-reading the start of the Noli, where Padre Damaso says gunpowder was invented by a Franciscan – like him – in the SEVENTH CENTURY) has been for quite a while. American educators including the Thomasites – and Joe who I have joked is actually a Thomasite who got caught in a time warp from 1905 and found himself in 2005, with amnesia to boot but he didn’t forget he liked Mark Twain – have mentioned ROTE TEACHING as a major issue, but it goes deeper.
Filipino masses will usually rely on the word of someone they respect. For our maids it was their “Auntie” (imagine it pronounced in the very marked Cagayan Ilocano accent) aka Manang, our labandera, who had come to Manila sometime in the 1960s and knew the lay of the land. One of our maids for a while, a public school teacher tired of climbing hills in Cagayan for little pay to teach kids who often were Ibanags or Itawis who spoke neither Tagalog nor English nor Ilocano, moved to HK to work as a maid in the early 1980s and had the same role for a niece. By 1995 that woman had married an Englishman and moved to London and her niece was the one all other relatives who came relied on. That niece spoke Cantonese almost like I think a Kowloon gangster would hehe.
Filipino “educated” will rely on intellectual “authorities” including the likes of Heydarian, while Filipino masses will rely on influencers they feel they can trust, with the likes of Makagago and Bungo (that is how they are literally called) having their following.
I mean we all do rely on secondary sources, as we CAN’T know everything firsthand, even EXTREMELY well-travelled people like you or somewhat well-travelled people like me. Our reach exceeds our grasp. But we have centuries of epistomology (before I met Edgar Lores, I would not have known the difference to entomology) developed since the Greeks and refined by scholar-monks in the Middle Ages (sonny kind of taught me to unlearn some Rizalian anticlericalism) and the European Enlightenment, while Filipinos have their native tools (kind of lost and out of place in a globalized world) of listening to “people called maroronong” in their communities as the Spanish friars once complained and their imported tools which only few know how to use, so the one eyed are kings in the land of the blind.
There are Tagalog (any maybe even Visayan, though my algorithm doesn’t take me there) YT pages now that offer real knowledge about a lot of stuff in the world, showing how curious people are, a mix of the maroronong and learned mindset. So what people like my father (and to a lesser extent his “disciple” Xiao Chua) have said should happen, that Filipinos should develop their own lenses to see the world by, might be happening. Even if Filipinos chose the hard way, as usual.
I really like that characterization, that Filipinos should develop their own lenses to see the world by. I would add, and the confidence to see the view as good, in itself. As legitimate and “actionable”.
I do hope said lenses is bifocal. 360 views not only to see the world but also to see much closer: the id, the inner self. I hate the rhetoric of filipinos blaming bulok na sistema for what ails the nation and keeping it back. it is not really the system but the people who brazenly corrupted the system, and further ensured the system is corrupted, whose vested interests allowed mainly for the continuity of the system being corrupted.
no matter what kind of modernisation the system undergo, it will still be bulok, if the people running the system are the epitome of what bulok is.
That’s true. Everyone should be issued a mirror when they turn 18.
some of those that turned 18 are repeat offenders. I doubt if mirror whether double sided or not will work on them, seriously. just looking at the faces of those brazens masked thugs of the trillion peso march who stupidly thought no face no case and thought they can hide behind dark face mask, therefore untraceable and cannot be prosecuted, have got it all wrong. they got caught, unmasked and made to face their crime.
law should not be lenient on repeat offenders, given 2nd chance only to re-offend.
Agree.
ANC video on the riots and looting around Recto (what is not shown is the black and masked young men, but the report shows a crying mother who indirectly admits her kids joined gangs, and in other vids these boys indeed looked like Quiapo or Tondo gangs let loose) but also about the legitimate and peaceful demonstrations – with the twist that Duterte supporters and others quarreled on EDSA, not on this video that some Duterte supporters danced budots on EDSA..
video showing Vice Ganda calling for the death penalty against corrupt officials. Whew, considering how “evidence” was faked against for instance Senator De Lima.. such an instrument under the wrong people is dangerous, even if I get the strong sentiment.
Probably a fix of the system with a Department of Water at the center and local water authorities (but fully transparent to citizen and civic society audits by Freedom of Information somehow) would be better than dramatic “solutions”.
ahem, de lima is certainly an oddity, a political prisoner. we dont have much political prisoners around the likes of ninoy aquino, dad ni PNoy. I am for death penalty (maybe) we just have to refine and fine tune the criteria for the penalty of penalties: the death penalty.
death penalty should not be immediately the punishment of choice, the 1st choice, but last choice when there is no more reasonable doubt.
https://x.com/manayleila/status/1969990928753627532 Cong. Leila De Lima’s statement:
“I condemn the violence at Mendiola. This is not what we aimed for in going to the various rallies yesterday against corruption and the plunder of government infrastructure projects. This is not how we deal with disgust at people who steal billions while millions go hungry.
Yet, I cannot get myself to condemn the groups that instigated the violence, only their violent methods. The crowd at Mendiola appears to have largely consisted of urban poor youth organized in social media interest groups. They came to protest with us. Whether we like it or not, they are also fed up with the corruption of DPWH officials, congressmen and senators, and government contractors. More than us, they literally are that sector of the population from whom food that is to be fed to their families is snatched from their mouths by the likes of Sarah and Curlee Discaya, former DPWH Engineers Henry Alcantara and Brice Hernandez, and corrupt lawmakers and public officials. As Jam Alindogan said, they were also the primary victims of Duterte’s drug war and draconian pandemic lockdown orders. They suffered the most. As they said, “palagi na lang kami ang ninanakawan, kahit kami naman ang pinakamahirap”. There is no worse crime than stealing from the poor.
I commiserate with the Manila policemen who became victims of their violence for simply doing their job. I am impressed by their patience and display of maximum tolerance. You did not deserve to be at the receiving end of the violence. Hindi naman kayo ang mga nagnakaw sa mga raliyista at kanilang mga pamilya. Ang mga nagnakaw nandoon sa kanilang mga mansyon, pinapanood na magsakitan ang kanilang mga ninakawan, binabato at hinahataw ang isa’t isa dahil galit na ang taumbayan. Ngunit sa galit, hindi puwedeng kahit kanino na lang pwede ibaling ang poot. Lalong lalo na, hindi sa pulis. Hindi sila ang mga magnanakaw. Sa katotohanan, pare-pareho kayong biktima ng mga magnanakaw. Bakit kayo-kayo ang nagsasakitan?
I would like to appeal to the Manila Police District not to compound the violence that transpired yesterday with another kind of violence, the violence of the State. Huwag na sana ninyong ipagkait sa mga raliyistang inaresto ang kanilang karapatan sa abogado at iba pang karapatan ng mga naaresto. Idaan nyo sila sa proseso ng batas. Ikulong ang dapat makulong. Hayaang magpiyansa ang hindi naman kakasuhan ng non-bailable na krimen. Irespeto ang kanilang mga karapatang pantao, kahit kahapon hindi kayo nirespeto bilang mga alagad ng batas.
Sa huli, matuto tayo sa mga pangyayari. Ayaw nating maging Nepal. Panagutin natin ang mga magnanakaw sa tamang paraan at sa mapayapang pakikitungo sa isa’t isa. Kung hindi ka isa sa mga Discaya, Alcantara, o sa iba pang sangkot na mga mambabatas at opisyal ng gobyerno, kasama ka sa mga biktima. Hindi dapat tayo ang nagsasakitan.”
She has become extraordinarily wise. Well, she’s had to deal with contradictions of the most severe kind.
https://x.com/manayleila/status/1970143445781184757 more from her:
“We are one with the call for public officials to release their SALNs to ensure transparency and accountability.
Pero higitan pa natin ang panawagan. In addition to releasing SALNs and bank secrecy waivers, we urge the AMLC to also issue freeze orders on the bank accounts not only of DPWH officials and contractors, but also of lawmakers involved in anomalous flood control and other government infrastructure projects. Isama na pati mga kaanak nila. They should also be open to scrutiny of their bank accounts and transactions, para talagang malaman natin kung wala talaga silang itinatago.
And to truly implement the people’s right to information and the constitutional policies of full public disclosure and honesty in public service, we are pushing for the urgent passage of our House Bill No. 2897 or the “People’s Freedom of Information (FOI) Act of 2025”. This measure is crucial to finally address the vulnerabilities and problems that arise from the lack of transparency and access to information. Sa ilalim ng batas na ito, hindi na magiging pahirapan ang paglalabas ng SALN at kaukulang mga dokumento mula sa mga opisyal at kawani ng gobyerno, na para bang nakikiusap pa ang publiko na gawin nila ang tungkulin nila sa taumbayan.
Katapatan at pananagutan ang dapat maging SOP sa gobyerno, hindi ang kickback, pagnanakaw, at pandarambong sa kaban ng bayan.”
If you ask me, the Philippines needs something similar to the RICO Act in the USA, adapted to local conditions, allowing authorities to flash freeze accounts of people under investigation, as the RICO Act helped a lot in pushing back against The Mob over there. And of course FOI that allows civic groups to audit major projects, do the math for themselves. Not wait for COA audits.
That would help. Law enforcement is restricted from following the money as well. It’s like the lack of forensic investigations, no appreciation of good data.
the current ombudsman restricted access to saln. doj chief remulla promised to allow open access to saln if appointed the next ombudsman.
Good of Remulla to offer that up. I’m thinking he would not be aggressive as Ombudsman because he has not been aggressive at DOJ.
doj’s remulla said alleged big time flood scammers, the discayas, are now granted temporary protected witnesses. not state witnesses dahil to be state witnesses, the discayas must admit wrongdoing and return the money grabbed. under witness protection, the discayas are deemed safe from assassinations and provided safety, whether they become cooperative to the inquiry is another matter.
Act 1 Scene 2.
may karapatan daw ang mga na-aresto, may I also add that because those na-aresto allegedly used violence against persons and properties, resulting in damages to properties and injuries to persons, they may not be treated civilly but criminally. I think, our age of criminality is 15. those na-aresto have rights, victims too have rights, and victims are likely to demand restorative justice.
to compensate for the crimes committed and aside from just showing remorse and paying fines, those naarestos (thugs and perpetrators) should be made to return the payment received like maybe new cellphones, ipads, etc. they should not be allowed to enjoy proceeds of crime, else they will continue to commit crime because doing so is fruitful and rewarding.
https://x.com/newswatchplusph/status/1970095083635851642
“PHOTO OF LENI ROBREDO NAMING DPWH IN LIST OF AGENCIES TO INVESTIGATE GOING VIRAL
WATCH: During the CNN Philippines presidential debate in 2022, candidates were asked which government agency would their administration investigate first for allegations of corruption.
Then Vice President Leni Robredo listed not one but four agencies: the Bureau of Customs (BOC), Bureau of Immigration (BI), Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).
That portion in the debate has been going viral amid back-to-back investigations on multibillion-peso anomalies in flood control projects. The controversy has implicated lawmakers, DPWH engineers, and contractors.”
One of my main criticisms of President Aquino was his reluctance to clean up Customs. I could never figure out who the personalities were and why it was “hands off”. He put BIR and DPWH in good hands. I don’t know about Immigration. It’s always had small scale nonsense fees, but letting the pogo people in willy nilly was a whole different level.
He removed Ruffy Biazon and replaced him with Bert Lina.
Ah, thanks. But corruption remained, and resistance to automation.
I think, customs got worse under duterte, he could only stop tanim bala at naia, but not the big time importation of shabu that even his own son got implicated. no evidence found does not necessarily mean no evidence exist. it was just so very hard to find very well hidden evidence and become quite really dangerous to go looking for it.
Former Magdalos pa man din.