Peso Plunder Palooza: How Philippine Politicians Turn Calamities into Cash Cows

By Louis ‘Barok‘ C. Biraogo — July 23, 2025

“Nothing unites Philippine politicians like a good disaster—not to save lives, but to plunder the public purse.”

ON July 22, 2025, as the Southwest Monsoon (Habagat) turned Quezon City and Manila into urban swamps, mayors declared states of calamity with all the gravitas of Oscar-worthy method actors. But behind the crocodile tears lies a sordid tradition: calamity funds, meant to save the vulnerable, too often morph into political ATMs. Let’s carve through the bureaucratic hogwash with a Pulitzer-sharpened scalpel.

1. Calamity Capitalism’s Grand Larceny Gala

Quezon City’s Mayor Joy Belmonte and Manila’s Isko Moreno Domagoso, with their calamity declarations, promise hotlines that hum and hospitals on “high alert.” A real tearjerker, until you peek behind the curtain.

Cebu City’s 2025 rice-dumping fiasco spills the beans: 166,600 sacks of rice, bought with ₱49 million in disaster funds, were paraded through non-calamity barangays, stamped with the mayor’s name like campaign confetti. Councilors screamed “vote-buying,” while residents got worm-infested grains. Very nice! A calamity fund with no calamity! Cebu Daily News, 2025.

Then there’s the ₱245 billion flood-control budget, which somehow leaves Metro Manila’s streets as navigable as Venice’s canals. Ghost projects and padded contracts are old hat—₱900 million vanished in the Malampaya scam, and Napoles’ PDAF scandal showed how fake NGOs turn disaster cash into political gold.

Quezon City and Manila’s declarations? Either a cry for the drowning or another VIP pass to the pork barrel rave.

2. The Anti-Corruption Charade: A Kabuki Con

“Marvel at the ‘safeguards’—so watertight they vanish like a monsoon mirage!”

The Philippines flaunts RA 10121 (DRRM Act) and RA 3019 (Anti-Graft Act), laws that sound like steel traps but crumble like soggy cardboard. Mayors treat calamity funds like personal crowdfunding campaigns, and the Sandiganbayan’s “acquittal specials”—like Degamo’s 2021 dodge—prove justice is more suggestion than mandate. Evidentiary gaps? More like a sinkhole for accountability.

The Department of Budget and Management’s “Disclosure Portal” is a literary triumph of creative fiction—LGUs upload receipts slower than a 90s dial-up modem. Cebu’s five-day receipt rule is a Band-Aid on a gushing artery. The UNODC’s “game-changing” procurement reforms? Ignored like a vegan at a lechon luau UNODC, 2024.

The New Government Procurement Act and Project DIME’s geotagging sound snazzy, but without political spine, they’re just props in this transparency farce.

3. The Poor: Cannon Fodder in the Calamity Cash Grab

“Every peso pilfered = one less emergency kit for families on cardboard rafts in Quezon City’s floods.”

The urban poor, wading through Habagat’s deluge, are the collateral damage of this heist. Skimmed funds mean shoddy dikes collapse, farmers drown in debt, and 2.8 million kids miss school yearly as disasters turbocharge poverty.

The 2025 budget’s calamity fund slash—from ₱31 billion to ₱20.5 billion—guarantees even less reaches those on soggy mattresses PMCJ, 2024.

Trust? Shattered. Post-Yolanda, donations plummeted 21% as Filipinos realized aid is a piñata for officials. This “climate apartheid” traps the poor in cycles of displacement while elites cash in. The Philippines, a top-three climate-vulnerable nation, can’t afford this treason—yet the treasury’s still a politician’s personal pool.

4. Fixes With Fangs: Stopping the Calamity Cash Carnival

Biting Band-Aids for the Monsoon Money Grab:

Slap GPS trackers on rice sacks—mayors can’t be trusted with a compass.
Ditch ‘public bidding’ for a live-streamed Hunger Games for contractors. Let’s bet on the least crooked!

Real Reforms:

Lock ‘Em Up: The Ombudsman should treat fund theft like armed robbery—because it is. Life sentences for economic sabotage, not six-month timeouts, would sting.
Tech Takedowns: Geotag every project, from dikes to rice packs, and roast corrupt LGUs with viral TikTok audits. Let the internet do what courts won’t.
People Power: Arm barangays with localized FOI programs to track funds. If City Hall’s a den of thieves, let the poor hold the receipts.
Climate Shields: Expand insurance for farmers and fisherfolk, so they’re not groveling for scraps when floods hit.

The Final Sting

Next time Habagat floods Manila, don’t curse the monsoon—curse the politicians who’ve been looting the treasury like it’s a monsoon of their own. Quezon City and Manila’s calamity declarations could save lives or just fuel the next act in this disaster drama. Until we jail the plunderers and geotag the pesos, the only thing certain in a crisis is the cash grab.

Very nice, indeed.