CHICKENPIE.The floodwater comes every year. It comes in July, sometimes August, sometimes both. Chest-deep in Marikina. Neck-deep in Cainta. Children wading to school with their shoes on their heads. Families on rooftops, waiting for the news chopper that may or may not come.
₱573 million was supposed to help.
The Ombudsman says it moved through ghost contractors. Flood control projects in Laguna de Bay and Metro Manila that appeared on DPWH disbursement records but not on the ground. No drainage. No pumping stations. Just line items and signatures. The kind of flood control that doesn't keep water out — it keeps the paperwork dry.
The Sandiganbayan issued a warrant Monday. Senator Jinggoy Estrada surrendered that afternoon. He walked into the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, signed the papers, and told reporters he was doing it to protect the Senate's independence.
He said that with a straight face.
The Senate's independence. Not: the people who drown every monsoon. Not: the farmers watching their fields become lakes for three months straight. Not: the family who lifts their refrigerator box onto the evacuation center table because it's the only furniture that floats. The Senate. Its independence.
Plunder is non-bailable when the evidence of guilt is strong. The court looked at the evidence and decided "strong" was accurate. No bail. He is going in.
Senator Estrada is the son of Joseph Estrada — former president, convicted of plunder, pardoned, then elected senator, then mayor of San Juan. Legacy in Philippine politics has the consistency of monsoon water. It seeps into everything, ruins what it touches, and leaves no mark except the damage.
Every year the floods come. Every year the task forces form. Every year the drainage canals are clogged because the cleanup budget was realigned somewhere nobody talks about. The pumping stations run at half capacity because the maintenance contract went to someone's cousin, and the cousin has never seen a pump.
₱573 million would have helped. It did help. Just not with the floods.
Manila will flood again in July. Mr. Chicken has been standing in the same floodwater since 2013. He's learned two things: wear slippers, and keep your receipts.
