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When the Waters Rise, So Does the People’s Rage

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Louis ‘Barok’ Biraogo

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When the Waters Rise, So Does the People’s Rage

By Louis ‘Barok‘ C Biraogo — September 2, 2025

THE armored vehicle in Jakarta didn’t stop. It plowed forward, crushing a motorcycle and the man astride it, a rideshare driver named Agus just trying to get home. His death was the spark. Within hours, parliament buildings were ablaze, politicians’ homes were ransacked, and President Prabowo Subianto was on television branding protesters “traitors” as he deployed troops into the streets.

That was Indonesia, August 2025. But as I look at the Philippines today, I keep wondering: who will be the Agus of Manila?

The tinder is all here. Indonesia’s unrest began over lawmakers’ perks, obscene at a time of economic squeeze. In the Philippines, it is the ₱350-billion flood control fund—money meant to protect Filipinos from typhoons, but which mayors and engineers alike claim has been siphoned off through systemic graft. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. railed against it in his State of the Nation Address, but even as he thundered about “corruption-tainted projects,” his own Department of Public Works and Highways, led by recently-resigned Secretary Manuel Bonoan, sits in the crosshairs.

Every typhoon season, the evidence is visible in muddy waterlines etched on Manila’s shanty walls: families clinging to rooftops, children wading to school in sewage, livelihoods washed away. Billions spent, but the floods remain. The symbolism is devastating: the poor drown while elites profit.

At the same time, the political establishment is tearing itself apart. Vice President Sara Duterte was impeached this summer on charges of corruption and betrayal of public trust. The Supreme Court struck the impeachment down, but not before it deepened fault lines between the Marcos and Duterte camps. Add to that allegations of falsification in the 2025 national budget and mayors openly demanding answers for the flood-control “black hole.” These are not isolated scandals; they are a rolling storm system of impunity.

Now imagine the spark. A student march gathers outside the DPWH after another exposé—say, a leaked video of a contractor boasting about 60 percent kickbacks. Riot police move in. A scuffle, a truncheon swung, a teenager collapses on the pavement, blood pooling beneath him. Within hours, #FloodControlMassacre is trending. By nightfall, students from UP and Ateneo are joined by jeepney drivers, flood victims, and furious barangay residents. A mayor’s mansion is torched. The peso plunges. That’s Future A, the spark catching fire.

“A single leak in the dam of lies can drown a dynasty—if the people stop patching it with hope.“

Or perhaps not. Marcos has proved a nimble politician. He announces an “independent panel,” suspends a mid-level official, freezes a handful of contracts. Enough to deflate momentum, not enough to solve the rot. Duterte’s impeachment drama has fractured the opposition; student groups, progressive parties, and local leaders are divided in their allegiances. Dynasties thrive on fragmentation, and for now, division may be the government’s best shield. That’s Future B, the fuse snuffed—for now.

But elites may miscalculate. Indonesia’s tragedy shows the danger of arrogance. Prabowo’s heavy hand—branding demonstrators as “terrorists,” unleashing troops—only poured gasoline on flames. Marcos faces the same temptation. Already, hardliners mutter about “destabilizers” and “foreign agitators.” If security forces overreact, the Philippines could lurch from scandal to street inferno.

The first 72 hours after a spark will decide the future. Will there be an independent probe announced within days, with civil society at the table? Will Marcos instruct police to holster their truncheons and open channels to student leaders? Will implicated officials be suspended, contracts canceled, budgets opened for public scrutiny? Those are the choices that buy calm. Cosmetic gestures—committees with no teeth, token reshuffles—only deepen rage.

Longer term, the path is clear: procurement reform, empowered anti-graft courts, whistleblower protections, and flood-control funds that can be tracked peso by peso. These are not luxuries. They are the levees against political collapse.

I can still see Agus’s crushed motorcycle in Jakarta, lying beneath the armored car. His death was not just an accident, but the consequence of deaf elites and an indifferent state. The Philippines has its own Agus waiting somewhere—a driver, a student, a flood victim caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The question is whether those in power will act before that moment arrives. Because the fuse in Manila is already smoldering.

Source:

GMA News, August 31, 2025: Deadly Indonesia protests force U-turn on lawmakers’ pay

Louis ‘Barok‘ C. Biraogo

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