𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗕𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗯𝘆 𝗚𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗱 𝗟𝗮𝗰𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗮

Last week, Super Typhoons Tino and Fung-Wong (or “Uwan,” as PAGASA coldly christened it) ripped through Visayas and Luzon like God’s own wrath—185 km/h winds, flash floods that swallowed entire barangays, thousands evacuated, hundreds confirmed dead, and entire towns erased overnight. We’ve seen the drone footage: rooftops peeking like tombstones from brown water, mothers clutching babies on corrugated iron, the usual heartbreaking tableau we trot out every November.

And yet, this time, something snapped.

This past weekend, 650,000 Filipinos—yes, you read that right, six hundred fifty thousand—poured into the streets of Manila, not to beg for relief goods, but to scream one word: HUSTISYA.

Because while we were literally drowning again, it turns out billions of pesos allocated for flood control projects—money meant to build pumps, dikes, retention basins, early warning systems that actually work—had simply vanished. Ghost projects. Substandard walls that collapsed at the first surge. Contracts awarded to the usual “qualified” contractors (read: cousins, mistresses, frat bros, campaign donors).

We are not shocked that money disappeared.

We are shocked that, finally, people are angry enough to do something about it.
This is no longer just another typhoon story.

This is the moment the Filipino finally said: “Tama na.”

I have covered disasters since Yolanda. I have written year after year: “We deserve better infrastructure.” “Climate change is here.” And every year, the same politicians appear on TV with the same fake tears, handing out the same 5-kilo rice packs with their faces printed on them like it’s a campaign sortie.

But this time, the water hadn’t even fully receded when the receipts started coming out.
Billions for flood control under the DPWH budget since 2020—gone.

Projects in Bulacan, Pampanga, Metro Manila—certified “completed” on paper, but when the flood came, nothing was there.And who certified them? The same auditors who suddenly retire rich.

The same engineers who now live in Forbes Park.

The same congressmen who increased pork barrel disguised as “infrastructure funds” and then cried poverty when asked where the money went.

The most infuriating part? While our people were dying in Cebu, Bicol, Cagayan and Isabela, our very own government was sending a few weeks ago, at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, begging the world for “loss and damage” funds from rich nations because “we are a climate victim.”

Victim? Yes.

But also, ladies and gentlemen, we are being murdered by our own.

We are asking the world to pay us, for the global North to pay us for the carbon they emitted, while our own officials emit nothing but lies and steal the money that could have saved Filipino lives.

If we cannot even protect our own people with our own taxes, what moral authority do we have to demand reparations from Germany or America? None. We are international community will look at us and say: “Physician, heal thyself.”

And let’s not pretend this is just about one administration.

This is systemic. From Marcos Sr.’s time to Estrada to Arroyo to Noynoy to Duterte to Marcos Jr.—every single one promised to fix flooding in Manila.

Every single one left office richer.

The water is higher, the traffic worse, and the poor still die first.

But here’s what gives me a flicker of hope I haven’t felt in years: the crowd in Luneta last Saturday wasn’t just the usual activist crowd. There were students who’ve never joined a rally in their life. Office workers in sneakers because their shoes were still drying from the flood. Tita vendors who lost their carts but came anyway. Middle-class mothers from BF Homes who usually just post black squares on Instagram—but this time they marched.

They chanted not just “Marcos resign” or “Sara resign”—though those were loud too—but something more dangerous to the powerful:

“Wala nang takasan. Panahon na magbayad.”

No more running. Time to pay.

If this energy dies after Christmas, if we go back to TikTok and Pasko lanterns and forgiving everyone because “Pinoy tayo eh,” then we deserve the next typhoon and the one after that.

But if this becomes the spark that finally burns the whole rotten system down—not with violence, but with votes, with refusal to be bought for 500 pesos, with jail for the guilty regardless of surname—then maybe, just maybe, the children in 2030 will read about Tino and Fung-Wong the way we read about Ondoy: as the storm that woke us up.

Until then, I’ll keep writing the same column.

I think someone might actually read it and do something.

The water is rising, Philippines.

We can keep bailing with teaspoons of outrage, or we can finally plug the hole where our future is leaking out.

Choose. Now.

Because the next typhoon has already a name. And it’s coming. It always does.