The Senate, in Theory and in Shame

I understand why a Senate exists. At least in theory.

A second chamber is supposed to check the House, scrutinize the executive, improve legislation, and stop bad laws from being rushed through. In a functioning democracy, that role matters.

But looking at the Philippine Senate now, it is hard not to feel disgusted.

Too much of the chamber seems swallowed up by political self-preservation. We have seen the leadership drama involving Alan Peter Cayetano replacing Tito Sotto. We saw the attempt to place Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa under Senate protective custody amid the ICC warrant controversy. We are watching the continuing power struggle around Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial. And now there is the controversy involving Rodante Marcoleta, who is reportedly facing plunder and indirect bribery complaints before the Ombudsman.

Dela Rosa remains wanted by the ICC over alleged crimes against humanity tied to the Duterte drug war, while Philippine authorities have said they are seeking his arrest.

While Politicians Posture, Filipinos Wait

These are not small things. And taken together, they do not look like isolated controversies. They look like a Senate busy protecting factions, shielding allies, settling scores, and preparing for the next national election cycle. Whether every move is directly about 2028 or not, the behavior certainly feels like pre-campaign warfare.

And while they posture, ordinary Filipinos wait.

They wait for serious oversight of public spending. They wait for accountability in infrastructure and procurement. They wait for real work on healthcare, food prices, wages, public transportation, disaster preparedness, education, water supply, flooding, and garbage management.

They wait for a government that treats daily suffering as urgent, not as background noise.

That is what makes this spectacle so insulting. The Senate is not cheap. It is powerful. Its members are elected nationally and given enormous visibility. Yet too often, that power seems to be spent on protecting allies, attacking enemies, rehearsing campaign narratives, and keeping political families relevant.

When a Check Becomes a Cartel

To be fair, I am not saying “abolish the Senate tomorrow.” That would be too easy, and maybe too careless. A second chamber can be useful. In a country where the presidency and the House can also be captured by dynasties and factions, checks and balances are not something we should casually throw away.

But when the supposed check becomes another cartel of ambition, people have every right to ask what it is still good for.

If senators cannot put the people first, if they cannot stop turning the chamber into a staging ground for 2028, if they cannot do the work they were elected and paid to do, then Filipinos should seriously ask whether this version of the Senate still deserves its place in our democracy.

Because right now, it does not look like the Senate is serving the people.

It looks like the people are being made to serve the Senate.

Horror Under Concrete and Steel

The collapse of the under-construction building in Angeles City is horrifying. People were trapped under concrete and steel. Rescuers had to dig through the wreckage, hoping the next sound they heard would be a sign of life.

It is shocking.

But I cannot honestly say I am completely surprised.

We Do Not Know the Cause Yet

To be clear, I do not know what caused this collapse, as of writing. None of us watching from the outside can claim that yet. That has to be determined by engineers, investigators, inspection records, construction documents, materials tests, and evidence from the site itself. It could have been a design failure. It could have been poor supervision, bad construction sequencing, weak temporary supports, soil conditions, unauthorized changes, substandard materials, negligence, weather, corruption, or some combination of these. We do not know yet.

But the fact that corruption is one of the first things many people think of says something painful about the country I live in.

Safety Is More Than Paperwork

A building is not made safe by paperwork alone. It is made safe by honest work at every step: honest design, honest calculations, honest permits, honest materials, honest construction, honest inspections, honest approvals, and honest enforcement. Break one link in that chain, and people are placed at risk. Break several, and tragedy becomes easier to imagine.

The Least Powerful Pay First

This is the deeper problem. Not every engineer is corrupt. Not every contractor is reckless. Not every inspector is dishonest. There are many people in the industry who do their jobs properly, often under difficult conditions. And many construction workers are not part of the problem at all. They are usually the first victims of bad decisions made above them.

That is one of the cruelest parts of this. The people most likely to suffer are often the ones with the least power to question what is being built, how it is being built, or whether it is safe.

Still, public suspicion does not come from nowhere.

Filipinos have seen too many stories of substandard projects, questionable permits, politically connected contractors, ghost works, overpriced infrastructure, and officials who somehow avoid real accountability. So when a structure collapses, people do not only ask what failed physically.

They ask what failed institutionally.

The Questions That Must Be Asked

Who approved the plans? Were changes made during construction? Were the materials tested properly? Were inspections actually done, or merely signed off? Were warnings ignored? Were workers allowed to stay in an unsafe structure? Did anyone raise concerns? Did anyone sign something they should not have signed?

These questions matter because a collapse is never just rubble. It is a failure made visible.

Follow Every Signature

The Angeles tragedy should not be turned into instant blame before the facts are known. But it also should not be treated as a one-off accident, mourned for a few days and then forgotten once the news cycle moves on.

The investigation has to follow every signature, every approval, every deviation, every inspection record, and every decision that allowed the structure to reach the condition it was in before it fell.

And if corruption, negligence, unauthorized changes, or professional failure played any role, accountability should not stop with the easiest person to blame. It should reach the developers, contractors, subcontractors, suppliers, inspectors, engineers, officials, and anyone whose approval made unsafe work possible.

The Truth, Not a Scapegoat

Greed becomes deadly when the system gives it somewhere to hide.

The least the public deserves is the truth. Not a scapegoat. Not a press conference. Not another promise of reform that disappears after the victims are counted.

The truth.

Because accountability should not begin only after people are buried under concrete.

From the outside, one of the strangest things to watch is how easily principles turn into props. You see someone rail against corruption, abuse, incompetence; the whole vocabulary of righteous anger; and you think, good, they mean it! Then the name changes. Same offense. Different side. And suddenly, that fire cools into something more careful. More conditional. You can almost see the gears turning, searching for an exit ramp from their own moral stand.

I’ve watched it happen around the flood control disaster. Citizens, furious; and rightly so; demand investigations, jail time, public humiliation for politicians who pocketed funds, signed off on ghost projects, left people to drown because infrastructure was built on graft. The outrage is real. You can hear it in their voices. They want heads to roll! Fair enough.

But then the same kind of allegation surfaces about a politician they actually like. Someone they’ve defended before. Maybe even voted for with genuine hope. And here’s where the human part gets uncomfortable. You see the same people now asking for “context.” They blame a subordinate. They say the evidence is incomplete. They insist their idol “could not have known.” Some don’t even bother with that; they just attack whoever brought it up.

And here’s the thing: they don’t seem to notice the shift. From the outside, though, it’s stark. One moment, a person of principle. The next, a fan wearing a crusader’s costume.

What’s tragic isn’t just the hypocrisy. It’s how well corruption understands this game. Politicians learn quickly that they don’t need to be clean. They just need a base loyal enough to look the other way. Because as long as accountability is something you reserve for the other side, nobody in power has to fear the public. They only have to fear losing their fans.

From where I sit, a serious person, not a perfect one, just a serious one, doesn’t ask “Which side is this?” before condemning corruption. They ask one question: Was the public betrayed?

If flood control money was stolen, wasted, or turned into a political slush fund, the outrage shouldn’t depend on party color, region, surname, or who makes you feel hopeful at rallies. Floods don’t check IDs. The people wading through the aftermath don’t care about your nuance. And the only excuse that matters is none at all.

I am honestly tired of seeing the same story again and again: garbage in the river, garbage on the streets, garbage clogging drains, garbage floating where people are supposed to travel, breathe, live. The Pasig River Ferry Service had to be suspended because of a severe buildup of trash in the river, with the MMDA saying the garbage was damaging and disrupting ferry operations.

How much more embarrassing can this get?

We love to talk about education. We love to talk about values. We love to talk about being raised Catholic, being taught right from wrong, being “maka-Diyos,” being respectful, being decent. And yet somehow, after all those years of schooling, catechism, sermons, and moral lectures, too many Filipinos still cannot perform the most basic civic act: put trash where trash belongs.

That is what makes this so infuriating. This is not an advanced policy problem. This is not rocket science. This is not some abstract failure of governance alone. This is also personal behavior multiplied by millions. Someone finishes a drink and tosses the cup. Someone eats chips and drops the wrapper. Someone cleans a house and dumps waste outside. Someone sees a canal, a creek, a river, and treats it like a free garbage chute.

And then we all act shocked when the flood comes, when the stench rises, when transport stops, when cities look filthy, when rats and disease follow.

I am envious of countries where garbage is managed so well that you do not see trash strewn everywhere like part of the urban landscape. Their streets are not perfect because their people are angels. They are cleaner because rules are enforced, systems work, and citizens have internalized shame over littering. Here, too many people seem to feel no shame at all. The street is someone else’s problem. The river is someone else’s problem. The cleanup is someone else’s job.

So what would it take for Filipinos to learn?

Start with real consequences. Fine litterers. Enforce barangay rules. Make illegal dumping punishable. Stop treating garbage discipline as a “campaign” and start treating it as a daily obligation.

Teach children early, but do not stop with children. Adults are the ones making the mess now. Make communities responsible for their own surroundings. Shame habitual dumpers, not the people pointing out the filth.

And above all, stop pretending this is just about poverty. Poverty does not force someone to throw a plastic cup into a river. Rich people also throw their trash everywhere. Like when they throw their coffee cups out of their car windows wherever they are. That is neglect. That is entitlement. That is a broken civic culture.

What will it take? Maybe discomfort. Maybe penalties. Maybe public shame. Maybe all of it.

Because clearly, polite reminders are not enough.

I came across the Jarius Bondoc piece about the looming water shortage, and my first reaction was shock.

But maybe “shock” isn’t quite right. In the Philippines, maybe the real surprise isn’t that a basic necessity is being mismanaged. Maybe it’s that anyone still acts surprised when the warning signs have been there for years.

A Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight

The numbers alone seem pretty alarming. According to the Presidential Communications Office in 2024, at least 40 million Filipinos don’t have access to fresh or potable water. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was even quoted telling agencies to come up with a plan for those 40 million people—plus another 40 million without a guaranteed local water supply.

That doesn’t sound like a small service gap to me. It sounds like a national failure dressed up as an administrative problem.

The Philippine Statistics Authority’s 2024 APIS figures paint a more complicated picture: 98.4 percent of families had access to an “improved” drinking-water source, but only 53.1 percent had safely managed drinking water piped into their dwelling, yard, or plot that was always enough. More than half of families still got water from refilling stations, and 6.5 percent said they didn’t have enough drinking water at least once because it wasn’t available at the source.

So yes, a lot of households technically have “access.” But from what I understand, access can mean different things. It can mean clean water from a tap. Or it can mean buying water elsewhere, fetching it, waiting for it, or relying on a source that looks fine on paper but isn’t reliable day to day.

Too Many Agencies, Too Little Accountability

From what I’ve read, the deeper problem isn’t just that the Philippines lacks water. It’s that water governance has become a maze of agencies, overlapping roles, weak coordination, and delayed reforms.

A Senate Economic Planning Office policy brief warned that the country’s water resources are nearing critical limits because of watershed degradation, pollution, climate change, population growth, urbanization, and weak administration. It also said that water management involves more than 30 agencies, with no single central authority overseeing everything.

In simpler terms: everyone has a piece of the problem, so no one really owns the disaster.

Can the People Charge Officials?

This is where I think public anger could turn into legal and civic pressure.

If people want to hold officials accountable, from what I gather, the strongest case isn’t just “They failed to fix the water crisis.” That might be morally right, but legally too vague. The stronger case would be that specific officials had specific duties, received specific warnings, had access to specific powers, budgets, permits, plans, or contracts, and still didn’t act—or acted in ways that helped private interests over the public.

Under the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, public officers can be held liable if they cause undue injury to the government or anyone else, or give a private party an unwarranted benefit through obvious partiality, clear bad faith, or gross inexcusable negligence. The same law covers government contracts that are clearly and grossly disadvantageous to the government.

That phrase—gross inexcusable negligence—seems key.

Not ordinary error. Not one bad decision. Not a missed memo. But negligence so serious it’s hard to excuse, especially when millions of people are being told to live with dry faucets, unreliable supply, expensive alternatives, or unsafe water.

What Citizens Can Do

From what I’ve researched, people don’t have to limit themselves to angry posts and calls for resignation.

They can ask for serious congressional and Senate investigations that demand actual documents—not just sound bites: project lists, budgets, contracts, concession agreements, water-source studies, delayed permits, local water-district records, audit findings, and procurement histories.

They can file complaints with the Ombudsman if there’s evidence of gross neglect, favoritism, questionable contracts, unused funds, or officials ignoring formal demands.

They can push the Commission on Audit to look at water-related projects the same way flood-control projects have been examined: who got the contracts, who was paid, what was completed, what failed, and who benefited.

They can pressure LGUs to share their local water plans, water-quality monitoring, supplier arrangements, and emergency preparations. If a mayor or governor can find money for tarpaulins, festivals, vehicles, and self-promotion, citizens can ask where the money is for water.

They can organize consumer complaints against concessionaires and water utilities when service obligations aren’t met. They can ask for hearings before regulators. They can question why rates rise faster than reliability improves.

And they can support creating a real water department or regulator with real authority—not another ceremonial office that mainly issues statements while people line up with buckets.

What Is Marcos Doing?

In 2023, the Marcos administration created the Water Resources Management Office under the DENR to try to harmonize water efforts and push for integrated water management. The office was also supposed to help create a Department of Water and/or a Water Regulatory Commission.

In 2024, Marcos also ordered agencies to focus on the 40 million underserved Filipinos without formal or assured water supply. That order, at least on paper, acknowledged how big the crisis is.

But recognition isn’t the same as rescue.

The hard question, for me, is whether these actions have actually produced water for the people who need it—or just produced another layer of government language. If 40 million Filipinos are still underserved, then maybe the public shouldn’t be satisfied with “we created an office” or “we ordered agencies to prepare a plan.”

A plan isn’t water.

A memorandum isn’t water.

A press conference isn’t water.

The Real Issue Is Priority

It seems to me that people should be asking for deadlines, budgets, named accountable officials, published progress reports, and consequences for failure. They should ask which communities will be served, when, by whom, at what cost, and through what projects.

Because when a country can afford billion-peso projects, political dynasties, campaign caravans, confidential funds, ceremonial launches, and endless ribbon-cuttings—but still can’t guarantee clean water to tens of millions of its own citizens—then maybe the issue isn’t just scarcity anymore.

Maybe it’s priority.

And if public officials had the power to act but chose delay, indifference, incompetence, or private gain, then maybe people shouldn’t just ask for explanations.

Maybe they should ask for accountability.

Sources/Footnotes

1. Jarius Bondoc, “Water shortage imminent; agency in charge unconcerned” — Philstar, May 20, 2026 https://www.philstar.com/opinion/2026/05/20/2529131/water-shortage-imminent-agency-charge-unconcerned
2. “Philippine gov’t to address lack of potable water access for 40 million Filipinos” — Xinhua / English News.cn, May 7, 2024 https://english.news.cn/asiapacific/20240507/fd18634bb01e4337a87400aec15ab543/c.html
3. “Access to Basic Drinking Water Service Among Families Improved in 2024” — Philippine Statistics Authority, March 13, 2025 https://psa.gov.ph/content/access-basic-drinking-water-service-among-families-improved-2024
4. “Quenching Policy Thirst: Reforming Water Governance in the Philippines” — Senate Economic Planning Office Policy Brief, May 2024 https://legacy.senate.gov.ph/publications/SEPO/PB_Quenching%20Policy%20Thirst%20-%20Reforming%20Water%20Governance%20in%20the%20Philippines_07May2024.pdf
5. Republic Act No. 3019 — Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act — Office of the Ombudsman https://www.ombudsman.gov.ph/docs/republicacts/Republic_Act_No_3019.pdf