The Corrupt and the Wicked Do Not Rest: Who Watches the Watchers?

It’s Black Saturday in the Catholic world—a day of silence, of stillness, when even joy and labor are paused.
No celebrations. No work. No noise. We’re taught to sit with sorrow, to wait.

But the corrupt and the wicked keep moving.

So here we are.
The kettle boils. The news scrolls. Another official, another headline, another billion missing. We sigh. We shake our heads. We scroll some more.

But the question refuses to be silenced—
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Who watches the watchers?

It isn’t just an old Latin phrase. It’s a mirror. A challenge. A wound we’ve learned to cover with sarcasm and survival.

We live in a country where corruption doesn’t sleep. Where backdoor deals happen at dawn. Where ghost roads and fake clinics drain funds while the rest of us line up for rice, for jobs, for hope.

And still we’re told: “Ganyan talaga sa Pilipinas.”

But maybe that’s why I’m still writing this—with tired eyes and this cup of coffee. Because someone has to stay awake.

A Nation Where Corruption Works Overtime

We all know that kind of tired.
The kind you feel in your bones when you’ve done everything right—paid your taxes, lined up for government IDs, avoided shortcuts—and still feel like you're getting nowhere.

Meanwhile, corruption runs like a night shift.
No punch in, no punch out. Just power hoarded, favors exchanged, papers falsified in rooms you'll never enter.

According to the latest rankings, the Philippines placed 115th out of 180 countries in the global Corruption Perceptions Index (Transparency International). That’s not rock bottom—but it’s far from reassuring. It means 114 countries are cleaner. It means we’ve accepted too much, for too long.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime recently described corruption in the Philippines as “pervasive in all branches of government and the wider public sector.” That’s not an accusation. That’s an autopsy.

And yet—there's no shortage of people who see it.
A Pulse Asia survey from late 2024 revealed that 90% of Filipinos believe corrupt officials must be held accountable. Another 41% say it should be the top priority for senatorial candidates.

So why does everything still feel stuck?

Because knowing is not the same as doing.
And outrage—especially the kind expressed online—has become so predictable, so rhythmic, that it no longer shakes the system.

We've turned "Ganyan talaga sa Pilipinas" into a lullaby. One we whisper to ourselves so we can fall asleep a little faster, even if the house is burning.

But corruption doesn’t rest.
It evolves. It adapts. And more often than not, it wears a familiar face.

And that’s what makes it dangerous.
Because it doesn’t just sit in Senate halls.
It thrives in barangay offices, in backroom deals, in cousin-to-councilor favors.
And if we want to end it, we have to start where it hides.

From Bamban to Barangays — Mapping Corruption’s Local Ecosystems

We’ve been trained to think of corruption as something that happens “up there.”
In Congress. In the Palace. In agencies with acronyms we rarely understand.

But if you want to see where corruption really lives, walk down your street.
Sit in a barangay hall during a bidding. Talk to someone who lost out on ayuda.
It doesn’t just live in the headlines. It breathes in the barangay.

Take Barangay Poblacion in Zamboanga Sibugay. In 2023, 40% of their flood control budget was funneled into ghost contractors. The paper trail? Sloppy on purpose—missing receipts, questionable signatures, documents locked behind “not available at this time” excuses (MPRA).

And it’s not an isolated case.
In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, 183 barangay officials were investigated for listing fake names as beneficiaries of the SAP cash assistance program. Ghost people receiving real money—while actual families went hungry (DILG).

But it’s not always strangers stealing.
In Central Luzon, 78% of reported graft cases involved family networks—treasurers related to barangay captains, SK officials tied to councilors. It’s corruption as a family business (ANU OpenResearch).

And these days, bribes don’t even pass hands in envelopes anymore.
They arrive through GCash, labeled as “community donations.”
Untraceable. Unspoken. Understood (Wikipedia).

If you think that’s bad, zoom out.

In Cotabato, a scandal broke in 2024 when Chinese contractors—armed with fake permits—snagged 17 infrastructure projects worth billions. It wasn’t just one rogue deal. It was a system:

• Local officials issued backdated environmental certificates.
  
  

• National agencies fast-tracked ₱2.3 billion in PDAF.
  
  

• Shell companies provided forged completion documents to unlock more funds (Wikipedia).
  
  

No wonder Mindanao, despite receiving just 14% of the national budget, racks up 34% of Sandiganbayan’s malversation cases (UNAFEI).

And let’s not forget the national-level circus.

There’s Alice Guo, who somehow became mayor of Bamban, Tarlac—only for it to be revealed that she’s not just linked to Chinese POGOs, but allegedly to human trafficking, document fraud, and god knows what else (Inquirer).

Or Judge Albert T. Cansino, caught accepting a ₱6 million bribe in Pasay in May 2024. A judge. A man meant to uphold the law (Inquirer).

This isn’t just high-level corruption—it’s cultural rot.
A rot so familiar we stopped smelling it.

“Corruption doesn’t always wear a suit. Sometimes it wears a barangay ID and greets you good morning.”

And it’s time we stop pretending we don’t see it.

The New Face of Corruption — Screens, Coins, and Disinformation

Corruption used to wear a barong and carry folders.
It used to meet behind closed doors, pass envelopes under the table, and sign papers nobody read.

Now?
It moves through apps, online wallets, fake videos, and memes that make lies go viral.

In 2024, a so-called “crypto farm” in Pampanga was raided by authorities. What they found wasn’t agriculture—it was a secret money movement system hiding in the provinces.
Small rural banks were being used to send stolen public funds into digital wallets.
Fake farm equipment was “purchased” just to create receipts.
And the money was converted into online currency so it could be sent abroad without a trace (Wikipedia).

In Bulacan, a mayor funneled ₱890 million through online art projects—NFTs, they called them. But there were no artists. No real paintings.
Just paperwork designed to make the money look clean, like laundering clothes through a washing machine—but this time, it was our taxes being rinsed out and spun away (Wikipedia).

Then there’s the propaganda machine.
In Batangas, candidates in the 2024 elections secretly paid TikTok creators to call anti-corruption advocates “communist troublemakers.”
No proof. Just trending hashtags and flashy edits meant to make people doubt the truth (Wikipedia).

In Ilocos Norte, fake videos started spreading in 2023—videos that made it look like opposition leaders were accepting bribes. They weren’t real. They were edited, manufactured, deepfaked.
But by the time anyone figured it out, it had already flooded Facebook groups and poisoned people’s minds (Wikipedia).

And in Cebu, bidding for public projects wasn’t done fairly.
It was done in secret Telegram group chats, where construction companies quietly agreed on who would win and how much they would bid. No arguments. Just quiet coordination to make sure the “competition” was fake (Wikipedia).

This is the new face of corruption.

It no longer hides in envelopes.
It hides in apps.
In trending posts.
In comments that make you doubt what’s real.

And the worst part?
It looks normal.

If we don’t learn how it works now, we’ll be fighting yesterday’s corruption with tools that no longer work.

Cultivating Persistent Resistance

Not all resistance is loud.
It’s not always a rally on EDSA or a trending hashtag.
Sometimes it’s a lola asking why the road her husband helped cement forty years ago still looks better than the one the LGU just finished.

Sometimes it’s a high school teacher counting the number of hollow blocks in a school wall and saying, “Parang kulang.”

In Abra, a group called the Concerned Citizens of Abra for Good Government (CCAGG) quietly monitored 12 school building projects.
They didn’t have a government office. They didn’t wait for a press release.
They just looked.

They compared contractor reports with geotagged photos from the DPWH.
They checked the cost of cement by asking hardware stores.
And when things didn’t add up, they filed small claims and recovered ₱18.7 million in public funds (Infrastructure Transparency).

This wasn’t “activism” the way the media shows it.
It was a kind of everyday heroism that Filipinos are good at but rarely praised for.

They used:

• Oral memory from elders to confirm if projects were delayed.
  
  

• TikTok posts with #AbraWatch to crowdsource images.
  
  

• Local radio to name officials who weren’t doing their jobs.
  
  

This is what accountability looks like—when it speaks the dialect of the people.

In Barangay San Jose Gusu, the officials tried something new.
In 2024, they launched an e-governance portal:

• Budgets could be tracked in real time.
  
  

• Blockchain-backed logs recorded every fund transfer.
  
  

• Residents could use an open-source map to see where projects were actually happening (MPRA).
  
  

It wasn’t perfect. But it worked. Kickbacks dropped by 42% in just one year.

And yet—only 12% of barangays in BARMM use systems like this.
Why? Because in some areas, local internet providers intentionally slow connections to stop people from accessing the data.
Sabotage in the form of buffering (Basel Governance).

This is the kind of resistance that doesn’t look heroic on camera.
But it’s there—in every text message that says “hindi pa natatapos ang proyekto,” and every quiet ledger check made over merienda.

It’s not about slogans.
It’s about asking a simple question again and again:
"Nasaan na ang proyekto?"

Reclaiming Accountability Through Culture and Youth Power

Not everything begins in Manila.

Some of the best systems we’ve ever had—systems for truth-telling, for justice, for keeping people in check—came long before Republic Acts and government IDs.
They were rooted in culture. In memory. In honor.

In Ifugao, elders didn’t wait for senators to pass transparency laws.
They revived something older and more binding: the bodong.

Through the Bodong Against Graft initiative, tribal councils began inspecting government-funded projects using traditional systems.
No spreadsheets. No fancy software. Just local logic.

They measured roads and irrigation canals using “rice field lengths.”
They imposed restitution using native scales: for every ₱100,000 stolen, one carabao must be returned.
And when someone admitted wrongdoing, they didn’t just pay—they faced cleansing rituals to restore spiritual and communal trust (ANU OpenResearch).

Since 2022, this system has recovered ₱23 million in misused funds.
More importantly, it’s kept 92% of the community engaged in local accountability efforts.

No press conference. No politics. Just people doing what needs to be done.

But while elders guard the past, the youth are guarding the future.

At the University of the Philippines, a program called Kilos Kabataan is training students to fight corruption with tech.

They use drones to capture aerial shots of unfinished or overpriced government projects.
They scan LGU websites for signs of dark patterns—design tricks that hide vital budget info.
And they conduct blockchain audits to cross-verify procurement records using zero-knowledge proofs—a way to confirm data without revealing sensitive details (UNAFEI).

In 2024, they blew the lid off a ghost dialysis center scam in Laguna.
The evidence? Patient records, blockchain-stamped timestamps, and enough digital tracking to convince prosecutors.

Seventeen people were indicted.

One group holds ancestral memory. The other holds a drone controller.
But both ask the same thing: Saan napunta ang pera?

They don’t wait for heroes.
They just don’t stop asking the hard questions—until someone finally answers.

Where Reform Begins — Local, Visible, and In Our Language

We’ve written enough laws.

Anti-corruption policies exist. Dozens. Hundreds. From procurement regulations to audit mechanisms to whistleblower protections.
But most of them live in Manila.
Most are written in English.
And most are locked away in binders nobody in the barangay has ever read.

What we need now are laws that make sense where the corruption happens.
Reforms that don’t just exist on paper—but show up in budgets, in ballots, and in the barangay hall’s community board.

Policy groups working with the Office of the Ombudsman have already proposed clear, targeted amendments to the Local Government Code (UNDP-Ombudsman):

• Section 34(a): Barangay budgets must be posted in native languages and Braille—not just English PDF files nobody opens.
  
  

• Section 107(c): Livestream all bidding processes with sign language interpreters, so transparency is not just seen, but understood.
  
  

• Section 381: Give ancestral domain communities the power to form tribal oversight councils, recognizing that cultural guardianship is also fiscal guardianship.
  
  

Meanwhile, in Sorsogon, a small pilot program has shown how local procurement reform can look—and work.

• Projects over ₱5 million are filed in red folders—a visual alert that triggers automatic community audit protocols.
  
  

• Community technical review panels include 30% out-of-school youth trained in forensic basics. Yes—young people checking on cement.
  
  

• QR codes are attached to materials like gravel and steel bars, allowing anyone to scan and trace them from quarry to construction site (Ombudsman-UNDP).
  
  

This isn’t some future fantasy.
It’s already happening. Quietly. Efficiently. Away from the cameras.

Because reform doesn’t need to be reinvented.
It just needs to be translated. Localized. Lived.

A law that can’t be explained at a sari-sari store is a law that won’t be enforced.

But if a tricycle driver can pull out his phone and check if a barangay road project was overpriced—then we win.

If a lola can hear a budget announcement in her own language and ask, “Bakit mas mahal ‘to?”—then we win.

If a tribe in the Cordilleras or a youth group in Cebu can force an audit just by showing up—then we win.

Because when reform is local, visible, and ours,
even the corrupt and the wicked will have nowhere left to hide.