The warrants of arrest are now finally out in connection with the flood control mess in Region 4B, the Mimaropa region. About to be arrested or already arrested include the regional director, two assistant regional directors, the chief of the construction division, the chief of the maintenance division, the chief of the quality assurance and hydrology division, the chief of the planning and design division, an accountant IV, a project engineer III, a materials engineer, and members of the Bids and Awards Committee (BAC). 

They are not small fry. These are not kagawads caught stealing office bond paper. These are the high officers of the Department of Public Works and Highways, custodians of billions in public works, gatekeepers of our infrastructure, trustees of our safety. 

Also about to be arrested are the members of the board of directors of Sunwest Corporation, the company that bagged the substandard river dike project worth P289.5 million.

If there is a perfect illustration of the collapse of checks and balances in our bureaucracy, this is it. If there is a perfect demonstration of how white-collar crime — our favorite national pastime — has become routine, banal, as normal as humidity in April, this is it. 

In my earlier posts, I wrote of undersecretaries parachuting into departments and turning their offices into vending machines for influence and cash. I wrote of flood control funds turned into cash fountains for contractors and politicians. This new arrest order is not a new chapter. It is the same book, the same plot, the same tired villains — only the names and regions change.

Look closely at those involved. Their very functions reveal the grand collusion. The participation of the BAC members alone tells you that the bidding process was rigged. Rigged is even too tame. It was cooked — slowly, deliberately, with simmering criminal intent — from the very beginning. Kunyare open to anyone, kunyare competitive, kunyare transparent, but in reality a sham. A preferred bidder already predetermined, the rest mere palamuti, as decorative as parsley on a plate of spoiled meat.

But what is most damning — most depressing, if one still has emotion left to spare — is the involvement of people who are supposed to be the technical conscience of the government.

First, the chief of the planning and design division. This is the division tasked to ensure technical integrity. They are the ones who know if the river dike can withstand floods, if the cement mixture will hold, if the steel bars meet standards. If anyone had the authority, the training, the moral and intellectual duty to insist on correct design, it is them. If they had done their job, they could have raised hell. They could have railed against substandard modifications. But they did not.

Then the chief of the construction division. Once construction begins, this is the officer who should insist that the approved plan is followed. This is the person who should cry foul when inferior materials are used. This is the one who should flag shortcuts, anomalies, sudden “adjustments” that miraculously save money for contractors but endanger entire communities. But they, too, signed off on the crime scene.

Then the chief of the quality assurance and hydrology division. If the planning division failed, and the construction division failed, quality assurance should have been the last bulwark. The internal auditor. The inspector. The one who should say: “Stop. This project is defective. Redo it.” They should have barred the release of funds. They should have filed a whistleblower report. But they were silent.

Then the chief of the maintenance division. Once the project was turned over, this officer should have seen the signs of a disaster waiting to happen. They should have called the contractor back, demanded correction, and withheld acceptance. But again — silence.

Then the technical engineers. The trained ones. The ones who studied hydrology, engineering, public works. They should have raised hell. They should have fought for the integrity of their craft. Instead, they became accomplices to its bastardization.

And then there is the accountant IV. The gatekeeper of pesos and centavos. The one whose job is to follow the money trail and raise red flags when materials suddenly cost 10 times more than market value. The one who should protect the people’s money with the ferocity of a mother protecting a child. But their signature, too, made its way onto the documents of corruption.

All were silent. All signed. Not all participated equally. Some may have been more active. Others may have been shy, conflicted, uneasy. Some may have been silent because they feared retaliation — our bureaucracy is ruled by unwritten codes, by padrinos and patrons, by threats whispered in hallways. But silence is complicity. Silence is consent. Silence is what transforms a bureaucracy into an organized crime syndicate.

White-collar criminals, unlike the “common criminals” our politicians love to parade and demonize, wear ID lanyards. They sit in air-conditioned offices. They sign papers instead of pulling triggers. They use ballpens instead of pistols. Their crimes are not seen on CCTV. Their crimes show themselves months — or years — later, usually in the form of collapsed roads, crumbled bridges, or flooded neighborhoods. Their fingerprints appear in the swollen knees of commuters, in the wrecked lives after every typhoon, in the muddy water rising in living rooms where children once played.

As I have written before, corruption at the flood control level is not petty theft. It is mass injury. It is social homicide. It is a crime against entire communities.

The failure of our government staff to speak up — despite their qualifications, despite their technical expertise — reduces them to palamuti. Technicians who make corruption more sophisticated. Engineers who make stealing more efficient. Accountants who sanitize criminal ledgers. Bureaucrats who become cogs in a well-oiled machine of institutional theft.

The result? A Philippine bureaucracy ripe for organized crime. A bureaucracy where collusion is culture. Where checks and balances are museum artifacts. Where everyone is too happy to use their power to produce crumbs for corrupt contractors.

And always, always, the Filipino people suffer.

Floods rise. Homes drown. Dreams rot under water. Lives are washed away.

And yet, the river of corruption — steady, silent, poisonous — keeps flowing. – Rappler.com

Raymund E. Narag, PhD, is an associate professor in criminology and criminal justice at the School of Justice and Public Safety, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.