2025 YEARENDER
People rise up again and protests flood the streets in 2025. It is a year that saw the rift widened not just between the ruling dynasties, but also the divide between the powerful and the marginalized. Injustice was seen in floods that ravaged cities and villages amidst corruption of contractors and politicians. Human rights score victories against trumped up charges. Issues in Davao City are brought up — floods, public transportation, human rights, good governance and accountability. Our stories reflect the changing tides of 2025.
DAVAO CITY, Philippines – The 2025 floods didn’t just swallow houses, farms, and streets; they flooded the Filipino psyche with a sickening display of greed.
While entire communities were drowning in mud and misery, a parade of ostentatious wealth—gambling windfalls, flashy mansions and cars, and the swagger of what netizens call “nepo” babies and families tied to government technocrats, engineers, contractors, and politicians—surfaced on the very same flood ridden terrain.
Public funds meant for disaster relief were siphoned off to line the pockets of the well connected, turning a national tragedy into a grotesque showcase of corruption and entitlement.
Across the country—from Metro Manila and Central Luzon to the Visayas and Mindanao—communities again found themselves submerged despite billions of pesos poured into flood control projects. What followed was not just another season of evacuation, but a year of anger, protest, and reckoning.
Millions of Filipinos are affected by disasters each year because of the country’s exposure to typhoons, floods, and earthquakes.
Data from the Emergency Events Database (EM?DAT) of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) show that the Philippines faces an average of 18 disasters a year, affecting around 12.1 million people annually.
In late 2024 alone, successive storms affected more than 10 million people nationwide, showing how regularly disasters disrupt lives and livelihoods.
Flood control remains one of the biggest public spending items in the Philippines.
The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) allocated 244.58 billion for flood control under the 2024 national budget. While a single nationwide figure for actual spending is hard to determine, the Commission on Audit (COA) reported in its 2023 audit that 3,047 flood control and infrastructure projects worth 131.57 billion were inefficiently implemented, showing the scale of funds already spent or obligated.
In Mindanao, flood control projects accounted for about 93.2 billion across 1,505 projects, or roughly 15% of all flood control projects nationwide, highlighting the region’s large share of these investments.
In Davao Occidental, auditors flagged a 96.5 million flood control project in Jose Abad Santos after inspections found little to no actual structure on the site, despite records showing that payments had already been released. It was described as a possible “ghost project.”
Rep. Claude P. Bautista, the province’s lone district representative, denied any involvement; his camp said the project was not under his family’s control and rejected claims linking them to the anomaly as “misleading” and politically motivated.
Bautista stressed that accountability should be determined through proper investigations by oversight agencies rather than public speculation.
In Davao City, various groups have staged multiple protest actions tied to alleged corruption in flood?control projects and broader graft concerns.
Progressive organizations, students, and residents marched in rallies such as the Citizens’ Rage Against Corruption protest from Roxas Avenue to Freedom?Park, calling for transparency and accountability in the use of public funds and condemning incomplete or anomalous flood control work.
Student groups from universities including Ateneo de Davao University and the University of the Philippines Mindanao staged coordinated walkouts and marches, carrying signs like “Ikulong ang kurakot” and demanding accountability for irregularities in multibillion peso flood control contracts; they linked the protests to nationwide anti corruption actions and historical struggles for good governance.
The group later renamed itself Stop Corruption Alliance and actively encouraged local participation in nationwide protest dates like Bonifacio Day (November 30), highlighting lists of flood control contractors and urging Dabawenyos to join broader calls for accountability.
These actions reflected sustained public dissatisfaction in Mindanao’s urban centers over perceived failures in infrastructure delivery and alleged misuse of funds, and they are part of wider demonstrations across the Philippines against corruption in flood control spending.
In the wake of the public outcry, President Ferdinand?Marcos Jr. created the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) to lead the probe into alleged corruption in flood control and other infrastructure projects. Chaired by former Court of Appeals Justice Andres Reyes Jr., the commission conducted hearings, reviewed project documents, and gathered testimonies on anomalous and so called “ghost” projects.
The ICI announced it was preparing multiple case referrals involving dozens of individuals for submission to the Office of the Ombudsman, recommending possible criminal, civil, and administrative charges. Former DPWH Secretary Rogelio Singson and top accountant Rossana Fajardo were among the original commissioners who helped shape the technical and financial review of projects before stepping down in late 2025, while former PNP chief Rodolfo Azurin Jr. served as a special adviser, assisting in evidence gathering and coordination with oversight bodies.
The commission has also worked with agencies such as the Anti Money Laundering Council to trace possible illicit flows, marking the ICI’s role as a key conduit between public protests and formal legal action over flood control spending.
But skepticism followed quickly. The ICI does not have prosecutorial power and relies on the Ombudsman to act on its referrals. Davao City 1st District Rep. Paolo “Pulong” Duterte also snubbed its summons that were supposed to investigate the gargantuan 51 billion DPWH funds allocated for his district during his father’s tenure.
ACT Partylist and Makabayan member Rep. Antonio Tinio also called for the ICI to look into at least 4.44 billion worth of allegedly anomalous flood control projects from 2019 to 2022 in Davao City, with around 80 contracts flagged for possible “double funding,” “overpricing,” and incomplete works.
Critics—including former Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV—have gone further, publicly accusing the ICI of skipping or avoiding scrutiny of the Duterte camp, and arguing that the commission’s credibility hinges on whether it investigates powerful political dynasties as aggressively as other targets.
What unified and sustained the protests was a single, blunt claim: the Philippines has sunk into the deepest abyss of corruption and poverty. Flood control projects have become cash machines for the elite, turning government run capitalism into a conduit for ill gotten wealth. Taxpayers’ money—once siphoned off by a handful of officials—is now being looted on a trillion peso scale, thrusting the country back into the global spotlight as a haven for graft.
All of this unfolds under Marcos Jr.’s watch, the son of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., whose regime was ousted in 1986 precisely because of rampant corruption. The irony is palpable: Marcos Jr. now casts himself as the whistle blower, brandishing “ghost projects” during his State of the Nation Address while the very same pipelines of patronage continue to flow unchecked.
For many protesters, the debate moved beyond whether corruption in flood control projects existed to whether political leaders with real power would ever be held to account, especially as high profile figures tied to the Marcos and Duterte political blocs remained largely untouched.
Vice President Sara Duterte was impeached by the House of Representatives in February 2025 on allegations ranging from graft and misuse of confidential funds to unexplained wealth and other high crimes after 215 lawmakers signed the complaint—well above the constitutional minimum—and the tally later reached around 240 supporters, though her trial stalled amid procedural delays and a Supreme Court ruling that nullified the complaint.
While mass anti corruption rallies like the “Trillion Peso March” drew tens of thousands nationwide to denounce flood control anomalies, critics pointed out that no major convictions of senior political allies—including Marcos administration figures accused of benefiting from flood control contracts worth hundreds of billions of pesos—had been secured, reinforcing the sense that the “big fish” have so far escaped justice despite repeated public outcry.
By year’s end, few senior officials had been sanctioned. Promised reforms—digital project tracking, tighter procurement rules, stricter quality control—remained largely aspirational.
Still, 2025 marked a turning point. While the planet wrestles with climate change and governments limp in their mitigation efforts, the Philippines’ flood control program proved to be a farce. It ceased to be a technical challenge and morphed into a political theater—a glaring reminder that the very public funds meant to shield communities are instead funneling them into a cycle of ever greater peril.
From the clogged avenues of Manila to the disaster-ridden Visayas and Mindanao, Filipinos refused to accept floods as simple acts of nature. Beneath the rising mud they saw a familiar triad: corruption, patronage, and impunity—the very “bureaucrat capitalism” activists decried more than half a century ago on the streets of the old Marcos era.
As the Philippines steps into 2026, bracing for harsher storms and the relentless march of climate change, the promise that mountains in Mindanao and its supposedly typhoon proof terrain could shield the island’s region proves hollow. The true disaster is not nature itself but the entrenched dynasty that has nurtured a cabal of “flood control billionaires” and inflated budget after budget for projects that enrich the few while endangering the many.(davaotoday.com)
