How to Murder a Nation

Dead bodies. Ravaged homes. Helpless survivors.

These frustrating scenes are almost unimaginable until you realize that you are a common Filipino— until you realize that another region will be ruined by a typhoon again someday and until you find yourself in the same hopeless situation as those you see in the headlines when the time comes.

And no, the main problem does not come from these typhoons. The typhoons happen to reveal the real problem in our nation: the government.

The recent onslaught of Typhoon Tino in Visayas reveals it all. Cebu, despite having 414 flood control projects amounting to 26.7 billion pesos from 2022 to 2025 based on the Sumbong sa Pangulo website, is the hardest-hit province in statistics. With that staggering cost and not even being in the top ten most flood-prone provinces in the Philippines, you would think that Cebuanos are at least safe from being drowned in flood waters, right? But no, the answer is a big no.

At least 141 died, 57 are still missing, and 123 are injured in Cebu alone. This makes the Typhoon Tino death toll rise to 204 as of writing, with Negros Occidental, Agusan del Sur, and nearby provinces recording alarming casualties as well. While the numbers alone are already overwhelming, they cannot speak for the amount of pain, fear, sorrow, and hopelessness that creeped into the minds of the victims during the nightmaric disaster.

They watched how violent floodwaters engulfed their community clinging from higher grounds, waiting for rescue to come. Some were even forced to witness their own family members struggle to death.Their hopes drifted away with the flood, and now they are left with no choice but to wrestle with hunger and grief.

The photos and videos of the tragedies circulating online are only a glimpse of how they lost everything so fast– how they ended in a situation they would have never dared to think would happen. But it did, and it was devastating. The people may have prepared for the typhoon when warned by PAGASA in their own ways, but nothing will ever prepare them for a catastrophe that was worsened by the systemic incompetence and substandard efforts.

As unfortunate as it may be, the aftermath of Typhoon Tino or any other storms that has entered our country does not only call for prayers or support— it calls for justice.

The flood control projects that were meant to help in avoiding the communities being swallowed up by waters have become instead a concretized manifestation of the longstanding systemic corruption. The natural landscapes that could have eased the flooding are destroyed by offenders under the protection of state legitimacy.

What’s worse is warnings from environmental defenders were ignored, and those who voiced anger or demanded accountability were silenced, allowing preventable destruction to unfold. These utter failures cost not only bodies being soaked or properties being submerged, but lives taken by the uncontrolled waters.

Had the allocations for mitigating floods were utilized with integrity and proper interventions were launched among environmental offenders, no residents needed to climb trees just to save themselves from suffocating torrents, no man had to revive his wife above their house, no grief was felt from residents who have destroyed properties and lost family members to the unforgiving calamity.

Lives could have been preserved.

Yet it grows painfully clear that those who sit in greed and power have long since had their consciences sealed. Sure, no one has ever wanted calamities to happen—even the government, environmental offenders, or the contractors of the nonfunctional and ghost flood control projects. But, in one way or another, their undoing allowed mass death and destruction. They have permitted the fall of the Filipinos they meant to serve.

It seems that asking for decent measures that would protect us from worsening calamities are too much to ask for—let alone justice.

Now that we are over a hundred days since the controversy in flood control projects first sparked yet no accountable is still jailed, typhoons will come to us faster than delivering justice. Officials may order as many probes on flood control projects and minings as they can, as many assurances to the public. But if the investigations downplay again into another teleserye-coded proceedings where big personalities evade accountability, more lives will perish underwater. One typhoon after another, we pay the price for a system we suppose to benefit from in the first place.

The worst part? The repercussions of this rotten cycle for the victims of Typhoon Tino will never be the first of its kind. We have seen it, and we are doomed to witness the same scene in the future with our very own eyes. It feels like we are a nation sitting on a ticking bomb—any moment now, the fuse will spark and the next storm will detonate the same devastation.

Now, the country braces for the impact of Super Typhoon Uwan, the short interval since the previous typhoon and the looming threat of the same devastating situation repeating itself. Until the government stops playing the same incompetent actions for us, mass death will always be at bay.

But if the plan of the government is to leave us to die in the midst of storms and brand it as resilience if we manage to survive, then I send my congratulations, our system is winning. It is the kind of crime they have mastered—corruption that kills us.

To the Philippine Government, you are doing a great job— a great job of murdering our nation.