CHICKENPIE.The floods came. The money didn't. More precisely: the money came first, was allocated for flood control infrastructure worth two hundred million pesos, went somewhere that wasn't flood control infrastructure, and then the floods arrived and found nothing useful waiting for them. Jinggoy Estrada is facing plunder and malversation charges for this. When informed the Ombudsman would be filing the case, his response was composed, clear, and three words long. "So be it."
"So be it" is a remarkable phrase to deploy when facing charges of stealing money meant to protect communities from floodwater. Most accused officials say they're innocent. Some promise to cooperate fully. Others launch into constitutional arguments about due process. Jinggoy Estrada said "so be it," which is the political equivalent of sitting calmly in a burning building and remarking on the warmth. It doesn't say he's innocent. It doesn't say he's guilty. It says: I have decided to experience this as something I will simply outlast. The law is weather, and he brought an umbrella.
There are communities outside Metro Manila — downstream of the flood control projects that didn't materialize — that have been saying "so be it" for thirty years. They say it every time the water crests the first-floor window. Every time the sandbags come three weeks after the damage. Every time the congressional allocation disappears into the fiscal ether and the rainy season arrives anyway, unchanged, unhelpful, on schedule. They say "so be it" too. But their version has no press conference. No lawyer. No three-word answer delivered with the confidence of a man who knows this is not the first time and probably not the last.
His "so be it" is an exit. Theirs is an entrance. The same phrase does two completely different things depending on where you're standing when the water rises.
