Billions Spent, Cities Still Flooded: The DPWH Scandal Is Being Buried by Politics

OPINION: Drowning in Deceit: The Flood Control Probe is Being Washed Away by Political Theater While the Filipino people continue to wade through chest-deep floodwaters, their belongings floating in the muck of every "once-in-a-lifetime" storm, a different kind of filth is rising in the halls of power. The investigation into the nation’s flood control infrastructure—a system that has swallowed billions, if not trillions, of taxpayers' pesos over decades—is rapidly devolving. What should be a clinical, ruthless autopsy of a systemic national failure is instead being hijacked by the petty, vindictive lens of the Marcos-Duterte feud. As the country pivots into "impeachment mode," it is becoming painfully clear: this investigation isn't about engineering; it’s about execution. Political execution. If the government were truly serious about fixing the flood crisis, this wouldn’t be a selective circus focused on a few high-profile targets to settle scores. A real investigation would be a scorched-earth audit of every single congressional district in this archipelago. It would storm the doors of every District Engineering Office (DEO) from Batanes to Jolo. It would demand a line-by-line accounting from every congressman who has treated the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) as a personal ATM for decades. Instead, what we are witnessing is "selective prosecution" masquerading as accountability. By narrowing the focus to a few political enemies, the administration and its allies in Congress are merely buying time. They are stalling, waiting for the political winds to shift so they can launch the next phase of their power struggle: impeachment. The scale of this betrayal is staggering. We are talking about the biggest corruption scandal in the history of the Philippines. We are talking about funds that could have built a first-world nation, instead diverted into substandard dikes that crumble at the first sign of rain and "rechanneling" projects that exist only on paper. Yet, our leaders are treating this monumental heist with kid gloves. Where is the fire we saw in previous inquiries? The Inter-Agency Anti-Graft Coordinating Council (IAAGCC) has become a ghost. The Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearings, once the terror of the corrupt, are now sparsely scheduled and drained of urgency. The House, which sits at the very epicenter of the flood-money storm, has gone curiously quiet on its own culpability. The nation is rightfully skeptical. We have seen this movie before. We know that when the elite fight, the truth is usually the first casualty. By nationalizing this issue only through the prism of the Marcos-Duterte rift, the government is gaslighting the victims of every typhoon. They are telling the mother who lost her home in Rizal or the farmer whose crops are rotting in Bulacan that their misery is only useful as political leverage. If this probe continues on its current path, it will not lead to better infrastructure or the incarceration of the "big fish." It will not result in a Philippines that stays dry during the monsoon. Instead, the quest for justice will be washed away, disappearing just as quickly as a substandard, multi-million peso flood wall is swept into the sea by the very waters it was supposed to stop. The Filipino people are tired of treading water. We don't need a bloodbath between two dynasties; we need a clean-up of the system that is drowning us all. If every district isn't held to account, then this isn't an investigation—it’s a cover-up with a better PR team. Stop treating our survival like a game of thrones. Because when the next deluge hits, the political posters will be the first things to drown, but the people will be the ones left under the water.