Amid the fanfare

Watching the congress’s corruption probe on the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) flood control issue is like a mental masturbation with the country’s greatest edgers: everything is pent-up, but nothing is blowing.  

This is the very warning our professor once told us as future journalists: to never let our stories be used by a politician for noise—or political grandstanding. For almost four months, the flood-control investigation kept us on the edge, but the climax of justice just never came. 

When President Bongbong Marcos Jr. expressed his “anger” to government officials who pocketed funds supposed to drive flood-control in the country, a slew of congressional hearings were held for politicians to accuse one another in a way to remain afloat in this political circus. From a supposed fact-finding session, these proceedings felt more like a primetime series that only made us “entertained,” and nothing more.

The truth is, corruption, much like poverty, is a trade secret that political figures use to keep themselves in power. They want the crisis to last for as long as they can milk it without affecting their baselines: A stage for them to get another title in their résumé next election—a corruption fighter or integrity builder, perhaps?

From the blame game to the Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN) revelations, everything feels like a smokescreen to keep us reeled in when we should be asking for real accountability. While, of course, these things help in the proceedings of the court, they’re not enough to bring the perpetrators to justice. We could do more. We should do more.

Have you ever wondered why it took Marcos an entire month to form the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI)? Exactly. If you already knew that something wrong is unraveling under your lead, why would you announce it to the world without prior arrangements? 

This isn’t merely a Marcos failure, but likely a planned strategy to clean up the mess of a crime scene. Now, the ICI is stuck recovering documents that were tampered with, or worse, destroyed. 

A fire even razed the records office of a DPWH branch in Quezon City. Although officials claim that no flood-control-related papers were affected by the fire, no normal government office would coincidentally burst into flames during a corruption probe. This is as questionable as it could get, and also a reminder that we can’t just keep on playing this game with no real consequences. 

This is why support towards real investigative journalism should be mainstreamed—because clearly, the people in power are not fully interested in resolving the case, but only in taking advantage of the situation. 

In terms of investigative journalism, there are three important trails to follow in these cases: people, electronics, and paper trails. Statements should be backed up by documents, and vice versa. However, with the strategic erasure of evidence, the court would most likely end up with red-herrings, or small pawns, but never the bigwigs. 

Rappler and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), among many other independent press, are clearly doing god’s work for investigating the deeply entrenched corruption issues in flood-control projects. They connect the dots through various paper trails, photos, and data to figure out relationships between political figures and contractors, which, in turn, allow us to peer into this large pot of controversy.

Their investigations, not these suspiciously-motivated hearings, were the ones that truly moved the cases up to this point. They’re the unsung heroes in every hearing, the ones who truly analyze the papers while the Congress is mentally masturbating with imagined justice. 

This isn’t the first time our Congress has failed us. Just like with Duterte’s failed impeachment trial, are we doomed to watch another crisis fade into obscurity? We’ve played this game before—when are we going to break the rules? 

As things go, this issue will end up losing steam without any figureheads held accountable, unless we go beyond the performative politics and force the government to do something real. And it starts with continuing the outrage by putting the effort of pressuring the powerful through consistent mobilizations, and supporting investigative journalists in their fact-finding missions.

Clearly, there’s a power imbalance, but we can retake the power to judge these criminals by never forgetting—by never being satisfied with all the ruckus—by not letting the noise drown the problems into obscurity. Because in a world where issues can go as fast as they came, it is our responsibility to never forget.