Tiangco vs. Garbin: Trading Blame While Navotas Drowns

The fight isn’t about truth—it’s about who controls the flood of money.

By Louis ‘Barok’ C Biraogo — September 8, 2025

On A gray August morning in Navotas, the water rose like a thief. It seeped through kitchen tiles, crept up bedframes, and swallowed the notebooks of children who had already missed too many days of school because of floods. Mothers balanced rice cookers on chairs to keep them dry, while fathers waded waist-deep to salvage tricycles that would no longer start. In these alleys, water is not an inconvenience. It is a sentence.

And yet, just a few miles away, in the air-conditioned garages of certain contractors, gleaming car collections worth nearly half a billion pesos gather no such rust. Porsches, Maseratis, a fleet that would make a sheikh blush—all purchased, allegedly, with funds meant to keep those Navotas children dry.

That, in a nutshell, is the Philippine flood control controversy: ordinary families drowning in sewage and sorrow, while politicians and their favored contractors sail yachts made of pork barrel.

The Feud That Distracts From the Rot

This week’s spectacle pits Navotas City Representative Toby Tiangco against Ako Bicol party-list Representative Alfredo Garbin Jr. Each man, in the grand tradition of Philippine politics, insists that the other reeks of corruption. Tiangco points to Zaldy Co, the former appropriations chair, accusing him of funneling billions into dubious projects. Garbin fires back: what about Tiangco’s ₱529 million insertions for flood control, much of it awarded to firms now blacklisted for ghost projects?

It is tempting to view this as a duel of good versus evil. But that would be a mistake. This isn’t a morality play—it’s political theater staged in a swamp. Both actors may be sinking, but their shouting distracts from the true villain: a system that turns flood control into a cash cow, where “insertions” grow faster than mold on soaked textbooks.

An Orchard of Rot, Not Just Bad Apples

Navotas genuinely needs flood control. The city is below sea level, battered by every typhoon and tide. Tiangco is right that his constituents deserve protection. But when 65 to 70 percent of his funds landed in the hands of contractors like St. Timothy and SYMS—companies blacklisted for ghost works in Bulacan—the defense starts to smell as foul as stagnant floodwater.

Garbin, for his part, cloaks himself in the language of accountability, demanding that Tiangco “mind his own backyard.” But Garbin’s own party-list feasted on billions in insertions, funneled through his ally Co. His righteous fury rings about as authentic as a luxury SUV’s leather interior, also allegedly purchased on the public dime.

This is not a story of two men fighting for truth. It’s a story of two men fighting for control of the orchard, even as the fruit rots and the people starve.

Follow the Money—And the Cars

The numbers are grotesque. Billions allocated. Projects awarded to firms later banned for life by the Department of Public Works and Highways. A ₱465 million car fleet—Ferraris and Range Rovers—that might as well be a monument to Filipino taxpayers’ gullibility.

Meanwhile, Navotas floods remain chest-deep. Children contract leptospirosis from rat-infested waters. Fishermen lose days of income, their bancas battered and useless. A city drowns, while contractors drive supercars bought with the money meant to build drainage canals.

It’s hard not to wonder: are the canals imaginary, or are they buried beneath layers of bribes and grease?

The Water Rises, The Truth Sinks

President Marcos vows accountability. Congress holds hearings. The DPWH blacklists contractors. And yet the water still climbs higher each year, a grim metaphor for public despair. Filipinos are drowning not only in floodwater but in corruption, bureaucracy, and hypocrisy.

Every peso stolen from flood control is not an abstract loss. It is a child who can’t attend school because the classroom is underwater. It is a grandmother who slips on a submerged stairwell. It is a nation that loses faith in democracy when lawmakers seem more concerned with defending their pork than their people.

From Pork to Accountability

Sarcasm aside, this doesn’t have to be the Philippine story forever. Other countries have clawed their way out of the mire. Three steps could start the cleanup:

Transparency Portals: Publish every flood control project online, with contractor names, disbursement schedules, and geo-tagged site photos. If the work is real, prove it.
Independent Technical Reviews: Require engineers, not politicians, to decide which projects are feasible, prioritizing river-basin solutions over pork-driven allocations.
Green Infrastructure: Instead of endless concrete walls, invest in mangrove restoration, wetlands, and permeable urban design—solutions proven to reduce flooding and corruption alike.

But let’s be blunt: this is not just about technology or portals. It’s about political will. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. can thunder against ghost projects, but until he forces the release of a full accounting—peso by peso, contract by contract—his words are as empty as the drainage canals that never get built. The Department of Public Works and Highways can blacklist contractors, but unless Secretary Vince Dizon prosecutes collusion and seizes ill-gotten assets, the Ferraris will keep rolling. And Congress? Unless lawmakers abolish pork insertions and submit their districts to the same scrutiny they demand of others, they should stop pretending to represent anyone but themselves.

Filipinos have heard enough speeches. They have buried enough neighbors after floods. They have mopped sewage out of their homes while politicians mopped champagne off their shirts. What is needed now is not another hearing, but a reckoning.

Floodwater shows no mercy. It doesn’t care about party-list affiliations or committee chairs. It sweeps away the rich and poor alike—though only one group has the privilege of driving away afterward in a Porsche. Until ordinary citizens demand, loudly and relentlessly, that the flood of corruption be stemmed with the same urgency as the flood of water, this democracy will keep sinking.

The tide is rising, and so must the people.