It starts with the water.

In Cebu, it always starts with the water. Not the gentle lapping of the tide on an island paradise, but the sudden, furious rise of a brown, churning deluge. It’s the sound of a sky tearing open, of rivers clawing past their banks, and of a city’s defenses failing, completely and catastrophically.

This isn’t a memory from a decade ago. This is the new, terrifying normal. In the last few years, despite a staggering 50 billion pesos—let that number sink in, fifty billion—being poured into flood control projects in the region, the water keeps winning. And it is taking lives.

One hundred and fifty.

That is the number of people who have died. One hundred and fifty souls, drowned, buried in mud, or crushed by the debris of what were once their homes. Four hundred and fifty-one have been injured. Countless others have lost everything.

These are not “acts of God.” They are, as a stunned Senate hearing is now discovering, acts of man. They are the direct, bloody, and inevitable consequence of a system so broken, so rotten with greed, that it has become, in the words of one senator, an engine of “homicidal negligence.”

While the bodies were being counted in Cebu, a different kind of accounting was taking place in a cold, air-conditioned room in Manila. The Senate was in session, and they were hunting for a ghost.

Not a ghost project, though those would come up, but a ghost document. A ledger. A simple, almost archaic book of transactions, allegedly held by a couple named Descaya, which has become the single most sought-after item in a scandal that reaches into the highest echelons of power.

This ledger, the senators believe, contains the truth. It holds the names, the dates, and the amounts. It is a detailed receipt for the theft of a nation’s future, a “who’s who” of the politicians and contractors who allegedly turned public safety into a private payday.

And the couple at the center of it all, the Descayas, were doing everything in their power to make sure no one ever saw it.

“I am in detention,” Mr. Descaya stated, his voice muffled, a man already caught in one legal trap. He was reminding the committee of his predicament, a convenient shield. “I could not retrieve it.”

The senators, led by a visibly frustrated panel, were not amused. They had been asking for this ledger for weeks. They had issued a subpoena. This was not a request.

“And Mrs. Descaya?” a senator pressed, turning to the wife. “You have no idea about its location? Its contents?”

Mrs. Descaya, according to the transcript, was a portrait of strategic ignorance. She had no idea. Her husband, she claimed, handled all the transactions with politicians. She was just… there.

It was a performance that was wearing dangerously thin.

“We remind you, madam,” a senator warned, the politeness in their voice cracking, “that you and your husband previously admitted this ledger exists. Failure to produce it now, or continued evasiveness, could lead to you being held in contempt. You could join your husband in detention. Today.”

The threat hung in the air, thick and suffocating. The Senate proposed a solution: they would provide a full escort. The Sergeant-at-Arms would personally accompany the couple, right now, to their home or office to retrieve the ledger.

Mr. Descaya’s lawyer, seeing the checkmate, quickly agreed. But then, a telling slip. Mr. Descaya himself chimed in, attempting to limit the search. He tried to cite his lawyer’s advice, to narrow the scope of what they could retrieve.

The senators exploded. This wasn’t a negotiation. They demanded the complete ledger. And not just that. They wanted a list of all their projects from 2016 to 2022. Every single one. Projects with the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), joint venture agreements, and anything under their company names, St. Gerard and Alpha and Omega.

“You are sanitizing the lists!” one senator accused, cutting through the legal dance. “You are not cooperating.”

The idea that a document of such singular importance—a ledger detailing hundreds of millions, possibly billions, in transactions with the country’s most powerful people—was simply “lost” or “hard to find” was beyond insulting. It was absurd. It was, the committee implied, a bald-faced lie.

This was a deliberate act of concealment.

Mr. Descaya, perhaps feeling the walls close in, admitted the ledger contained transactions not just with congressmen, but with “others.” The room tensed. Who were “others”?

The questioning pivoted. If they were going to lie about the ledger, how about the projects themselves?

A senator confronted Mr. Descaya with his previous, sworn testimony: “You claimed you had ‘no ghost projects’.”

Then came the data. Evidence of 382.67 million pesos in ghost projects. Another 367.15 million. These were figures for non-existent work in Southern Leyte, in Region 1, in Region 4B, Mindoro Occidental, Zamboanga City.

Mr. Descaya, cornered, offered a defense so weak it was almost comical. “Wrong coordinates,” he claimed. He argued that the wrong locations were simply submitted.

The senators were ready. They dismissed the defense out of hand, stating that the DPWH’s own website data contradicted his pathetic excuse. The “wrong coordinates” defense was, in itself, a ghost.

The scene ended with the Sergeant-at-Arms being given a direct order: Escort the Descaya couple. Retrieve the documents. The hunt was on.

But as dramatic as the chase for the ledger was, it was only a symptom. The disease itself was being dissected in another, even more chilling, line of questioning.

Senator Risa Hontiveros turned her attention to the DPWH, the very agency meant to build the nation’s defenses. She had the numbers, and they were staggering.

“Fifty billion pesos,” she said, letting the words echo. “That is what we spent on flood control projects in Cebu over the last decade. Twenty-six billion of that… in just the last three years.”

And what did the people of Cebu get for 50 billion pesos?

“One hundred and fifty people dead,” Hontiveros continued, her voice sharp with a quiet fury. “Four hundred and fifty-one injured. Homes and livelihoods… gone.”

She turned to DPWH Undersecretary Bisnar. “Were these projects… effective?”

It was the most generous, softball question of the day. And Undersecretary Bisnar could not, or would not, swing.

He acknowledged the obvious. The projects were “ineffective.” He offered that a formal report from the new Secretary, Secretary Dizon, was forthcoming.

Hontiveros wasn’t waiting for a report. She had her own. She began to list the sources, the chorus of condemnation: “NBI Region 7. The provincial governor of Cebu. Your own Secretary Dizon.”

And what did they all say?

“They all point,” she said, “to ‘substandard’ materials. ‘Ghost projects.’ ‘Deficiencies, poor planning, and ill-advised decisions’.”

This was not a natural disaster. This was a man-made one.

Hontiveros then asked the question that should be on the lips of every single Filipino. The question that cuts through the bureaucratic fog and the political spin, and aims directly at the heart of the matter.

“Were these 150 deaths, these 451 injuries… were they due to negligence? Incompetence? Or was it outright corruption?”

The Undersecretary, a man representing an entire, failed institution, took a breath. And then, he lit the fuse.

“It appears,” Bisnar said, in a moment of devastating honesty, “to be a combination of all those factors.”

A combination of all those factors.

There it was. Not just one, but all of them. A perfect storm of failure. He went on to explain that “commitments” and “advances” to contractors—words that dripped with the implication of kickbacks—meant that projects were not properly funded from the start.

But the most damning admission was yet to come.

Hontiveros brought up a 2017 DPWH-JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) master plan for Cebu’s flood control. A plan. A solution. A roadmap, created with international experts, to prevent exactly the kind of disasters that had just killed 150 people.

What happened to that plan?

Undersecretary Bisnar confirmed it. The 2017 master plan was “neglected.”

It was neglected.

They had the answer. They had the blueprint for survival. And they left it on a shelf to gather dust, while they, in combination with their “commitments,” pursued 50 billion pesos worth of “ineffective” projects that got people killed.

“Homicidal negligence,” Hontiveros called it. It’s a phrase that should be carved onto the “substandard” concrete of every failed seawall. She pressed Bisnar on contractor accountability, on taking them to court for the defects. He agreed, personally, but deferred to the department’s legal team.

The rot was everywhere. Hontiveros pivoted to another disastrous project in Cebu City, “The Rise at Monterasa,” which Secretary Dizon himself said was “pinagkakitaan,” or “profiteered from.”

She asked the representative from the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB), Ma’am Abrera, a simple question: Who “turned a blind eye” to grant the Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC) for this project, given the warnings and subsequent violations?

The answer was a masterclass in bureaucratic deflection.

Ma’am Abrera stated the ECC process was “thorough.” There were “four technical reviews.” A “public hearing.” An “independent body recommendation.” Approvals in 2007 and 2014.

“So who turned a blind eye?” Hontiveros asked again.

“I cannot answer that,” Abrera replied.

Of course, she couldn’t. In a system designed to obscure responsibility, the answer is always “no one” and “everyone.”

But how does this system of theft actually work? How do you steal billions from projects designed to save lives?

The answer came from another witness, Undersecretary Bernardo, a man so deep in the know that he was testifying under the protection of the Witness Protection Program (WPP).

Senator Francis Pangilinan was questioning him, trying to get a sense of the scale. Bernardo had previously disclosed the percentages of the kickbacks. Pangilinan just wanted to do the math.

“Based on the percentages you disclosed,” Pangilinan asked, “say, 15% of 15 billion pesos over three years… what is the total sum?”

Before Bernardo could answer, the Prosecutor General intervened. WPP confidentiality. Specific figures were a no-go, not without a written authority from the Secretary of Justice or a court order.

It was a legal shield. But Pangilinan, a lawyer himself, found the crack. “So I can’t ask for a new number,” he reasoned, “but I can do a ‘general mathematical computation’ based on figures you already divulged in your affidavit, correct?”

The Prosecutor General had to concede.

Pangilinan did the math out loud. “Fifteen percent of 15 billion… that’s an estimated 2.25 billion pesos in kickbacks.”

The figure was staggering. But the next revelation was even worse.

Pangilinan asked about cash deliveries, about Engineer Opulencia, a former NCR Regional Director who, shockingly, is still with the DPWH. A subpoena was quickly issued.

Then Pangilinan uncovered the real mechanism of the crime. He asked Bernardo about a 579 million peso figure. Bernardo confirmed it was a 10% advance from contractors based on 5.79 billion in projects.

Let that sink in.

This wasn’t just contractors giving a kickback after they got paid by the government. This was contractors giving advances of hundreds of millions of pesos before the DPWH budget was even approved.

This is the system. It’s a shadow economy. Contractors “advance” the bribe money to politicians to get their “special” or “over and above” projects inserted into the budget. The 579 million pesos did not come from DPWH funds; it came from the contractors’ own pockets, a down payment on a future, guaranteed, and massive profit.

This is why the JICA master plan was “neglected.” You can’t skim from a logical, integrated, and transparent plan. You can only skim from a chaotic, piecemeal, and “ill-advised” mess of projects that you created yourself.

The hearing left the nation with two haunting images.

The first is of the Descaya couple, being escorted by the Sergeant-at-Arms, on a reluctant scavenger hunt for a ledger that could bring the whole house of cards down. A ledger that isn’t just a book of accounts, but a roster of the guilty.

The second, far more terrible image, is of the 150 people in Cebu. The men, women, and children who didn’t have to die. The victims of a 50-billion-peso “combination” of negligence, incompetence, and corruption.

The water is still rising. And the ledger, still hidden, holds the names of the people who, for 2.25 billion reasons and more, couldn’t be bothered to stop it.