PRESIDENT BONGBONG MARCOS raised a call to scrutinize contractors who raked in billions for flood-control projects that turned out to be nothing but dikes of sand. Roads that collapse before the paint dries, drainage that turns streets into rivers, projects unfinished yet already “completed” on paper. Then the inevitable revelation: politicians—congressmen, senators—were behind these contracts. These were their pork. Their magic wand. Their piggy bank.
The scheme is old as time. Politicians divest their names on paper, but the companies remain theirs in spirit. Conflict of interest? It is not a conflict; it is the VERY business model. Despite the supposedly stringent rules of the Bids and Awards Committees, the winners were always the politicians’ preferred bidders. And the payoff is clean: gargantuan campaign donations come back their way, ensuring the wheel keeps turning, the dynasty keeps ruling. A firm with capitalization smaller than a sari-sari store can land projects worth billions, so long as it knows which hands to grease.
The corruption is not confined to the high towers of Malacañang or the Senate. It drips down to the barangay hall, the street corner, the jail canteen. Power is not wielded to govern; it is weaponized to extract.’
This is what scholars call “rent capitalism,” what activists name “bureaucrat capitalism.” I call it systemic plunder. It is not accident or anomaly. It is the bloodstream of the republic.
The corruption is not confined to the high towers of Malacañang or the Senate. It drips down to the barangay hall, the street corner, the jail canteen. Power is not wielded to govern; it is weaponized to extract.
A traffic enforcer waves down a driver. The fee is P2,000. “But for P500, you can go now.” A Bureau of Internal Revenue agent sits with a taxpayer. “Pay me directly and I’ll wipe your record clean.” A mess officer in a jail inflates the cost of rice by half, then splits the take with suppliers. Even in universities, a professor can be bought with a case of beer. “Sir, inumtayo mamaya, lapit na ang exam.”
We have a thousand euphemisms for it: pakikisama, team player, sumunod sa agos, kung ano ang tugtog, ’yun ang sayaw. All mean the same thing: survive by cooperating in the corruption.
Even noble projects are not immune. In our own community bail bond program meant to help first-time offenders, one staff member ran off with bail money despite strict prohibitions. NGOs are corrupted, charities are corrupted, churches are corrupted. The culture consumes everything.
The Filipino talent for rationalization is unmatched. “If someone thanks you with money, why not accept?” The prisoner’s family slips you an envelope—“it’s just gratitude.” You help secure a permit, and someone sends you a lechon—“it’s just appreciation.” But when gratitude becomes currency, it ceases to be gratitude. It becomes corruption, whether paid in pesos, in pork, or in principle.
The slope is greased further: “Okay lang tumanggap ng pera galing sa pulitiko tuwing eleksyon—pera naman natin ’yan.” With that shrug, we justify the very system that enslaves us. It ensures that only the richest, most corrupt politicians can keep winning.
We have seen this script before, over and over. The pork barrel scam under Janet Napoles, where lawmakers funneled public funds into ghost NGOs. The fertilizer fund scam of the Arroyo years, where billions meant to help farmers went into campaign war chests. The overpriced lampposts in Cebu during ASEAN. The Northrail project that never took off, but took off with billions.
Each scandal follows a ritual. A tragedy or exposé surfaces. Public outrage explodes. The government promises a crackdown. Committees are formed, hearings held, witnesses called. Headlines blare. Then—silence. No one is held accountable. No one is punished. The corrupt are not destroyed—they are upgraded. They grow more sophisticated, more inventive, more shameless. They master the new laws meant to curb them, and they weaponize them instead.
Why does this keep happening? Because the ground is fertile. Everyone despises corruption in the abstract, but when opportunity arises, everyone participates. The businessman who pays under the table to win a contract is just as guilty as the official who accepts. The citizen who sells his vote justifies the dynasty that enslaves him.
And the perversity of the culture is this: those who try to stay clean are mocked. Speak against corruption and you are branded naïve, nasa ere, not grounded in the “realities.” “Keep quiet,” people say. “Don’t join politics, lahat naman sila magnanakaw.” Worse, they will say “your principled stand will be twisted by corrupt politicians who weaponize your words against their rivals. You are not rewarded—you are used.” Thus, people who jeer my work said I am just being used.
This is the tragedy. Corruption is not merely practiced; it is normalized, romanticized, passed down like inheritance. Children grow up watching their fathers hand over bribes to the police, their mothers slip “pabaon” to officials, their barangay captain dole out cash during campaigns. It becomes the expected, accepted way of life.
Do the right thing, and you are the odd one out. You are punished for honesty, ridiculed for integrity, sidelined for refusing to play along. In a lawless society, to be lawful is to be the outlaw.
Is corruption in the Filipino DNA? Perhaps not biologically, but culturally, socially, politically—it may as well be. It is encoded in the way we transact, the way we excuse, the way we survive. It is not genetic fate, but it is intergenerational curse.
The president’s call to investigate corrupt politicians and contractors is welcome, but it is also wearying. We have heard it too many times before. What is needed is not investigation, but conviction. Not hearings, but jailings. Not speeches, but systemic surgery. Until then, every flood will not only drown our cities, it will drown our faith in this republic.
The question is not whether corruption is in our DNA. The question is whether we have the will to mutate, to evolve, to cut it out before it consumes us whole.
Or perhaps, it has consumed as whole.