MAYOR MAGALONG HAS done his part. He has sketched corruption’s portrait: the silhouette, the contours, the ugly shape of it. He has described the choreography of theft—the neat partitioning of loot, the slicing of the public pie before the oven is even lit. He has shown, from experience, how projects are bent, twisted, milked dry. He spoke with the precision of a soldier and the restraint of a scholar
And what does he get for his trouble? Suspicion. He is branded a partisan hack. He is mocked for being too general, and then demanded to cough up the specifics. He is asked to testify under oath, to name names, to point fingers, to do what Congress itself should have done decades ago.
As if Congress needed him. Congress, after all, has everything at its fingertips: the DPWH’s list of contractors, the SEC’s list of owners, the BIR’s ledgers of taxes paid, the Comelec’s records of campaign contributions. It has the NBI, the PNP, the Ombudsman, and every investigative body on speed dial. It has the keys to every vault, the passwords to every account.
If Congress really wanted to investigate, it could expose every phantom road, every ghost bridge, every hole-in-the-ground project in a week. But of course, Congress does not want to investigate—because Congress would be investigating Congress.
‘Because corruption is not a partisan disease — it is the national plague. It seeps into every presidency, every Congress, every barangay hall. It thrives under dictatorships and democracies alike.’
PASS THE BURDEN
So the trick is simple: pass the burden to Magalong. Demand receipts. Demand names. Demand the kind of proof that can only be produced if you already sit on the throne of power. It is the classic defense: when you cannot deny the crime, demand the documents.
Critics sneer that Magalong was silent before. Fair enough. His silence then should temper his halo now. But at least he is speaking. At least he is breaking the silence. And that is more than can be said of the politicians who, when asked about corruption, respond only with the sound of their forks scraping their plates.
And so his efforts, imperfect as they are, should be supported.
Because corruption is not a partisan disease — it is the national plague. It seeps into every presidency, every Congress, every barangay hall. It thrives under dictatorships and democracies alike. Even the best presidents are not spared the worst operators under their roofs.
SILENCE OF CONGRESS
Which is why Magalong matters. He has pointed to the cancer. And the response of Congress is telling: instead of cutting it out, they want to cut him down.
But here is where hope lives. Every crack in the wall, no matter how small, lets the light in. Every voice that dares to speak, no matter how late, makes it harder for silence to rule. Magalong may not have all the answers, but he has asked the right questions.
And questions are dangerous things. They multiply. They unsettle. They spread. One man asking “why” can lead to thousands asking “how long?” One man saying “enough” can lead to millions roaring “never again.”
The silence of one man may be weakness. The silence of Congress is conspiracy.
But the roar of a people—that is revolution.