We Who Are Not Yet Drowned

To whom it may concern,

I do not wish to be emotionally indulged in a predicament that I wish I and my family had never been affected by, but I guess you’ll never know, the universe conspires to have this letter sent to the right set of eyes to read, brain to comprehend, and heart to empathize.

I am but an ordinary citizen of this country. How I wish my life had been better; where when I wake up, the only thing to do is to bore myself with a routine life of gazing outside my window in the early morning, sipping freshly brewed coffee, while playing on repeat either Central Intelligence or The Tourist, then go to work and feel secure.

But I cannot, because in the wee hours I wake up to study my piled-up law books. Alongside studying, I update my class syllabus to see where I left off for my day’s lesson in class as a college instructor. And in the middle of the day, I go out to buy lunch for my father, who is either at the hemodialysis center or confined again in a hospital bed, for the nth time in one year.

Twenty-four hours a day is not enough for a hustler who has to move mountains just to make ends meet. And yet, that same twenty-four hours is still deducted whenever I have to wait in the middle of traffic, strategize how to cross flooded streets, and not to mention the aching inconsistencies in the pricing of public utility vehicles (which are, by the way, colorum). 

How do you suppose we live like this?

I came from a capacity-building training, and one thing I know—the government needs to do better. Now, even the academe is involved. For a simple planning strategy that requires more, we give so little regard to the qualifications of our public officials. I want to emphasize that our day-to-day life is entangled with the government.

There is this specific constitutional test that I’d like to mention—excessive entanglement. Although this is used specifically for the freedom of religion, I’d like to apply it analogously to this narrative. Our lives cannot be separated from our government. The government is a system of institutions meant to systematically plan and deliver services that all constituents (that’s us) can benefit from.

This starts from the air we breathe, is it clean air? Is the government doing enough to protect us from harmful gases that we inhale due to pollution? By the way, we have the Clean Air Act of 2009 for that.

Then we move to the waters we either drink or use, especially for our farmers. Is it clean? Is it well-regulated? Why do some municipalities exert ownership over the waters? Is it proper? No, of course not. The waters cannot be owned. It is the property of the State by virtue of the Regalian Doctrine.

Then we move to the risk reduction preparedness of the country. Scientifically, the Philippines is located in the hotspot of natural calamities—the Pacific Ring of Fire. In terms of volcanoes, we have both dormant and active ones. For earthquakes, we have fault lines that rattle the ground. And aside from that, we are also a typhoon favorite.

Being a favorite might be quite nugatory from the adverse effects of these disasters, but if you yield to this reality, we are indeed, for worse, a typhoon-favorite country. Does this make the Philippines vulnerable? 100% yes. Do we need to suffer all the time? 100% no.

And ladies and gentlemen, this is the fine line of this emotionally-fuelled narrative. I am a survivor of the 7.2 earthquake of 2013 and the devastating Typhoon Odette of 2021. Both calamities made the whole province suffer for months without electricity, water, or even a secure shelter. To add insult to injury, I am also surviving the day-to-day corruption in this country.

To assess that we are only vulnerable is to undermine the suffering we go through every day. We are victims, not just of calamities, but also of the greed of those whom we relied on to run the country.

According to the 1987 Philippine Constitution, specifically under Article XI, the yardstick of accountability for every public officer is that “public office is a public trust.” Besides that, their duties are also anchored to R.A. 7160 or the Local Government Code of 1991, and R.A. 6713 or the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees. These laws mandate the duties, functions, and responsibilities expected from them, including the extent and limits of their functions.

From the words of my good friend Ralph, “Overpromised, underdelivered.” This is the glaring reality we failed to see as a nation. How can we expect more from people who do not even know what accountability means? Thus, there is an apparent reality gap that disconnects public office from public trust. And in order to overcome this, we need to address that gap.

In my recent rendezvous, I willingly volunteered to assist the Local Government Unit. For context, our LGUs (Local Government Units) are the delegated institutions devolved with the governmental function to deliver services to the people. But first, what kind of services?

There are two functions exercised by every LGU: first, the governmental function; and second, the proprietary function. In delivering their governmental function, they should address services under specific sectors—economic, social, infrastructure, environment, and institutional. These are the focal areas that determine which services must be prioritized and planned out by our officials.

Simply because to address a problem, we need to spot the issue. Am I saying the issue is that our public officials are incapable of planning? Definitely not. They are more than capacitated. They have been trained to plan. But are they compliant? Yes, only several municipalities have not complied. They were asked to submit, so they did.

Now, here comes the in-between. Content-wise: Is the quality compliant? This is the problem most Filipinos are encumbered with: we submit for the sake of submission. When we plan, we must be visionary. We must not constrain ourselves to the problems of today, but also take into consideration what we learned from the past and what may come in the future.

And yet, we fail this requirement. Most projects implemented are short-sighted. In governance, these are short-term plans. When our public officials are short-sighted, we lose the essence of public governance itself. Imagine implementing projects anchored in capacity-building, training, and seminars; what do we train for, if nothing changes afterward?

Our public officials, lest they forget, are leaders of society. They are the ones to mobilize plans into action. But the fact remains, they are stuck, too, in their planning. The short-sightedness of our leaders is multifaceted. I firmly stand by my theory that the short-sightedness of our public officials leads them to function only within the realm of the present, neither learning from the past nor progressing into the future. They just want to maintain the status quo.

The status quo of delivering what is needed at the moment. And this short-sightedness is also one of the core reasons why public officials betray the constitutional mandate that public office is a public trust. Their short-sightedness opens the gateway to the fiascos we see in Philippine governance. Instead of planning for all sectors of society, they predicate their plans upon kickbacks after kickbacks after kickbacks.

The kickbacks betray the people by misappropriating funds under the guise of public service. What could be more insulting than public officials profiting from the sufferings of millions of vulnerable Filipinos? And after every devastating calamity, they romanticize the resilience of the poor—as if endurance is a badge of honor and not a symptom of neglect.

Every monsoon season brings the same scenes: flooded streets, trapped commuters, submerged homes, and exhausted workers trudging through waist-deep water just to get home. Billions are spent on “flood control” projects, but what exactly are they controlling? The flood, or the flow of funds?

We see drainage systems collapse after a single storm. Riprap walls crumble before completion. Waterways cleared one day, filled with debris the next. These are not just engineering failures; they are moral failures. The physical manifestation of short-sighted governance, a government that thinks in election cycles instead of generations.

Short-sighted governance is the curse of this nation. It builds for show, not for the future. It spends without studying, constructs without consulting, and celebrates ribbon-cuttings without accountability. 

Flood control becomes a slogan.

Infrastructure becomes a business.

Public service becomes a performance.

Because the truth is, the billions funneled into these so-called “flood control” or ghost projects could have saved so many other collapsing systems, the healthcare system that’s always underfunded, the education system that continues to breed functional illiteracy, the social welfare programs that never reach the fringes, the agricultural sector still begging for irrigation, and the public housing that remains only on paper.

Imagine if those billions went instead to build classrooms where children actually learn to read, write, and think critically, not memorize for survival. Imagine if those funds had gone to rural hospitals, to more dialysis machines, to medicines that don’t require patients to beg. Imagine if those projects built bridges, not just concrete ones, but bridges between opportunity and poverty.

In fact, the GMA News investigation featured in Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho (KMJS) exposed multiple failed flood-control works and ghost projects in regions like Pampanga and Tarlac, among others (GMA Network, 2025). The report revealed how hundreds of flood-control works were flagged as “ghost projects” or structurally deficient soon after completion. These are not isolated anomalies—they are patterns of plunder. Patterns that steal from the future.

It is time for those who hold power to remember that people’s lives are not collateral for contracts. That development without integrity is destruction disguised as progress. That the cost of every kickback is measured not just in pesos, but in lost homes, lost education, lost health, lost time, and lost hope.

And so I write this letter, not just to complain, but to remind every public official that accountability is not seasonal. The people are watching, and though we may be tired, we are not blind.

When the next flood comes—and it will come—it should wash away not only the dirt in the streets but also the corruption that has long clogged the arteries of our democracy. Until then, we will keep speaking, keep demanding, and keep fighting for a government that sees beyond its own shadow.

As Dr. José Rizal once said, “I wish to show those who deny us patriotism that we know how to die for our duty and our convictions.” But today, we ask not for death, only for duty. Not for martyrdom, but for maintenance. 

Because in this country, loving the nation shouldn’t feel like drowning in it.

May we be firm in our resolve for this nation, 

In this Lifeline

Bato-bato sa langit, ang matamaa'y wag magalit.