Having ghost projects in our public works is neither new nor surprising. We’ve always had ghosts in all aspects of our government and politics, from ghost voters (resurrected from the dead) to ghost employees and ghost parents (named in fraudulent birth certificates). 

What is new is the breadth, depth and brazenness of the plunder of government funds. While the Philippine Coast Guard, bearing the brunt of Chinese harassment in the West Philippine Sea, only had an intelligence fund of ₱10 million every year for 11 years (2013 to 2023), politicians, government officials and unscrupulous contractors of the Department of Public Works and Highways wallow in billions of pesos of ill-gotten wealth.

And we thought Janet Lim Napoles with her bathtub full of cash meant for nonexistent (ghost!) nongovernment organizations was scandalous enough? She didn’t come close.

Even the names of these public works contractors seem to indicate their ghostly quality. 

Contractor “Wawao” sounds very much like “Mamaw,” which means ghost or monster. By the names of the most notorious, it would appear that the company owners are particularly religious. There are St. Gerrard Construction, St. Timothy Construction, and St. Matthew General Contractor (among several others linked to the same contractor couple that have now been banned from bidding for government projects). Oh, one can imagine their probably subconscious invocation: “Angels and saints, may you give us the spiritual power of your apparitions and spectral abilities, that we may fully become ghostly and weasel out of any accountability…”

Now that the owners of these companies have sung like canaries, the denials, threatened lawsuits and whatever else the identified politicians, DPWH officials and assorted bagmen can throw at them are rightfully flooding the poster couple of contractor corruption. Everyone involved is rushing to jump ship and possibly swim to parts unknown, literally and figuratively.

Sure, the problem is systemic. (“It’s the system, stupid!”) But no way should former public works secretaries Mark Villar (now a senator) and Manuel Bonoan escape scrutiny, as it was during their watch that these graft-ridden projects were awarded and (not) implemented. The officials concerned may just conveniently disappear into the woodwork, or more appropriately, the sand and gravel of their errant staff and contractors, becoming ghosts themselves and escaping liability. 

While the problem is systemic, responsibility is still individual. We cannot keep pointing to the system and evading individual responsibility. 

Cynically, one is tempted to observe: We are literally sinking and maybe none of those public works will really last, especially the substandard ones. Maybe the contractors know this. Maybe the DPWH engineers know this. It’s an extreme rationalization. But faced with the futility of fighting (or mitigating at the very least) nature and climate change, they decided it was better to make money out of an impossible task. No need to do the project at all. Better to save your breath and not even go through the motions of constructing anything.

Rampant fakery is not only virtual. It is in hard copy, in certificates of completion that are veiled with the “presumed regularity to the documents” and signed off in cavalier and complicit fashion. And because the DPWH district engineer concerned was deluged with paperwork, it was “impossible for him to personally inspect each project,” and he just certified without physically checking the veracity of project completion. Maybe the fat cat should be fed his fake documents so he will know how it is to drown in inedible material like mud from the latest flood.

The instigators of these shenanigans are the usual suspects—the congressmen, who take advantage of loopholes in the budget process and insert personally appropriated allocations in the billions of pesos.

The alleged primary proponent of these budget insertions is not even a congressional district representative. He is a party-list representative, which only goes to show how abysmally low the party-list system has become and how its representatives could be more corrupt than some regular district representatives.

That party-list representative is not around either. He has already turned into a ghost, seeking medical consultation for low blood pressure in the United States. (This is exactly the kind of people President Donald Trump should kick out of America. But there he is, taking his sweet time, allegedly getting treatment for a medical condition that could be routinely handled in the Philippines.)

This, of course, goes far deeper than money. It goes to our core, of who we are as individuals and as a country. 

My taciturn but very perceptive son has two words to explain all the misdeeds that plague us. “Sick society” is how he describes our country and people. And yet he does not want to leave and live anywhere else. Maybe we have succeeded all too well in making him feel secure and hopeful that the evil that men do and are capable of will not touch him. I pray for him, always asking God for his divine protection from floods, ghosts and ultimate despair.