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Protests erupted across the Philippines and paralyzed the capital Manila on Sunday over a corruption scandal involving flood-control projects in a nation battered by storms and poverty.
Thousands of Filipinos massed in the capital on the main Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, a historic highway known by its acronym EDSA, many either clad in white or wearing a white ribbon, and braving extreme heat and rain. Protesters hoisted the Philippines’ national flag, while some flew the Japanese anime One Piece’s Jolly Roger—a symbol of dissent popularized by the protests in Indonesia. In one corner, priests held a mass. In another, a group chanted and called Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to resign.
A few kilometers west, near the President’s official residence and office, chaos ensued. A youth-led protest led to a trailer truck being set on fire. Several masked rioters in black pelted stones at police guarding the presidential seat. Police fired water cannons to disperse the mob.
September 21 holds special significance for Filipinos, since on that day in 1972, Marcos Jr.’s father, the late President Ferdinand Marcos, announced nationwide martial law that commenced a two-decade period of authoritarianism and led to the arrest of some 70,000 people, the torture of about 34,000, and the killing of at least 3,240. The elder Marcos was only toppled in the largely peaceful “People Power” protest in 1986, which also occupied EDSA.
More than five decades later, Filipinos are protesting a different form of abuse—public officials’ and public works contractors’ alleged theft of potentially billions of dollars from government coffers through flood-control projects.
Marcos Jr. appears to deviate from his father—notorious for crackdowns on dissidents and protests—by encouraging the demonstrations. “Do you blame them for going out into the streets? If I wasn’t President, I might be out in the streets with them,” Marcos Jr. said on Sept. 15. “Of course, they are enraged. Of course, they are angry. I’m angry. We should all be angry. Because what’s happening is not right.”
The flood-control corruption scandal is a double-whammy for the Philippines. It is among the most vulnerable nations to the climate crisis: floods are a recurring deadly problem in the country, and successive governments have claimed to dedicate their efforts to mitigating the effects of such natural disasters. But corruption is similarly rampant: the Philippines lags behind many of its Asian neighbors, according to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.
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Hernando Delizo, a 66-year-old physician, attended the EDSA protest on his bike with seven fellow cyclists. “We would like a radical change—it cannot happen the way that we see it,” Delizo said. “The ones who are really guilty should go to prison immediately.”
Jasper Lota, 16, a student from the nearby flood-prone province of Bulacan, echoed calls for imprisonment: “People get jailed so easily if they steal something as small as a bag of rice, the resolution comes so swiftly—but with this, why can’t the resolution come as fast?” She went to EDSA, saying she cried after hearing the scale of the corruption—floodwater recently submerged her home. “You see a lot of Filipinos suffering, and that’s what they’ll do to the country’s money?”
Protests in the Philippines drew parallels with other corruption-related mass movements in Asia in the past weeks. In Indonesia, people protested against the privileges that “corrupt elite” lawmakers got. In Nepal, a youth-led movement toppled its government over “nepo kids” and their gratuitous displays of wealth alongside a social media ban. In Timor-Leste, a plan to give lawmakers free cars was scrapped following protests in the capital.
“This is just the beginning,” said Rep. Jose Manuel Tadeo “Chel” Diokno, a House of Representatives member who is also part of a congressional panel investigating the dubious projects. “This corruption has been happening for a long time, but no one has been punished for it. And it’s about time that people satisfy their need for accountability.”
How did we get here?
Heavy rain and associated flooding are all too common in the Philippines, which lies along the Pacific typhoon belt and experiences monsoon winds. A 2017 study by Filipino researchers states that metropolitan Manila “lies on one of the widest floodplains in the Philippines,” and that floods in the metro are compounded by several factors, including waterways being obstructed by informal settlers and waste, rivers narrowed by development, and nearby forests being degraded. The flooding, however, is not just limited to Manila, with nearby provinces also regularly submerged.
Flood-control infrastructure is a go-to solution to this problem. However, in July, following a series of typhoons and the southwest monsoon bringing torrential rainfall, President Marcos Jr. said he inspected flood-control projects, only to find many of them had collapsed.
In his annual State of the Nation Address on July 28, Marcos Jr., speaking before Congress, said: “Let’s stop pretending. The public widely knows such projects invite rackets—kickbacks, initiatives, erratas, SOPs, ‘for the boys.’ So to those conniving to steal from public funds and rob our citizens of our future, you should be ashamed of your fellow Filipinos!”
Marcos Jr. then ordered the Philippine Department of Public Works and Highways to submit a list of all flood-control projects, which will be examined, audited, and then made public. “In the next few months, we will charge anyone who emerges to be at fault from these investigations, including the contractors involved around the country.”
This audit found that the Philippines spent 545 billion pesos ($9.5 billion) on flood management since Marcos Jr. took office in 2022, resulting in 9,855 flood-control projects. But Marcos Jr. also flagged that 20% of these projects were handled by only 15 contractors, and about two-thirds lacked key building details.
Marcos Jr. has tried to address the scandal, including creating an independent commission to probe alleged corruption in those projects, and ordering a “lifestyle check” on government officials.
According to sociologist Athena Charanne Presto, public furor also developed over gratuitous displays of wealth after a popular city mayor, Vico Sotto, who was honored by the U.S. State Department in 2021 for good governance and transparency, drew attention to his political opponents’ collection of wealth. These political opponents, Pacifico and Cezarah Discaya, also happen to own two of the 15 businesses Marcos Jr. flagged.
“It triggered a certain kind of awareness among social media-savvy Filipinos,” Presto said, given Sotto’s popularity.
In the following weeks, Filipino social media users started to spread the public displays of wealth by the children of those involved in the controversial projects, such as public contractors and lawmakers. Netizens criticized these children’s trips to European countries and designer fashion that the average Filipino could not afford. Local law prohibits ostentatious displays by public officials, as well as their families.
A panel in the Philippine Senate also opened an inquiry into the flood-control projects last month, and, in subsequent hearings, key speakers and witnesses revealed million-dollar unfinished projects, some of which involve members of Congress. Marcos Jr. Administration officials said it’s possible that the alleged corruption could reach trillions of pesos. (On Sept. 16, a Philippine court froze 135 bank accounts tied to these anomalous flood-control projects.)
The corruption scandal had ballooned to the point that it caused a congressional shake-up. The Senate, where the inquiry is ongoing, replaced its leadership on Sept. 8: a source told local news outlet Inquirer.net that then-Senate President Francis Escudero’s links to one of the 15 controversial flood-control public contractors played a role in his ouster. On Sept. 17, House Speaker Martin Romualdez, a cousin of the President, stepped down amid pressure caused by the flood-control projects’ links to congresspeople.
What comes next?
Mass protests are common in the Philippines, and in two instances in the past, they were able to oust two Presidents: the elder Marcos in 1986 and Joseph Estrada in 2001.
But “the sheer scale” of the latest flood-control corruption scandal “in itself is extra galvanizing for the Filipinos,” Richard Heydarian, a senior lecturer and political observer from the University of the Philippines, tells TIME. He adds that timing played a role in developing discontent: “We’re talking about flood control projects which are faulty, and that’s very much on display with all of these massive natural disasters and flooding in recent months.”
The recency of floods and the “emotional” impact of these contractors’ apparent endless greed, fueled rage that has been sitting there for a while, Presto, the sociologist, added.
Heydarian said that the fallout between the Marcos family and Dutertes—another powerful dynasty—gave the corruption scandal a political dimension. While both have “terrible reputation when it comes to good governance,” Heydarian says the Duterte family is “sensing an opportunity to undermine the Administration, or at the very least make their discontent with the status quo felt.”
The grassroots anti-corruption movement is tasked with not only making their grievances heard but ensuring that their protests aren’t hijacked, says Heydarian.
The Philippine government is also under pressure to do more to address the corruption; otherwise, public discontent may boil over and lead to widespread violence. “More heads need to roll,” says Heydarian, “to not necessarily placate the public, but at least to make sure that the Philippines can nip any Indonesia-style or even Nepal-style explosion in the bud. It will be difficult, but it’s far from impossible.”
But Heydarian also notes the difference in circumstances between Indonesia and the Philippines, as Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto holds “extremely inflexible” and “dated authoritarian populist thinking which is more reminiscent of [former Philippine President Rodrigo] Duterte.” Marcos Jr., on the other hand, appears to be “much more dextrous, much more responsive, even embracing a much more reformist kind of outlook,” Heydarian added.
Presto says, however, that the growing anti-corruption movement may die if the public doesn’t see adequate reckoning. “After everything has been said and done, after all family members have been exposed or scrutinized, but all of these politicians end up winning in the 2028 election, I mean, what would that demonstrate? That might demonstrate that accountability is just an abstract concept in the Philippines, that impunity wins again, and that will breed further disillusionment.”
Adding to this disillusionment, Presto said, is how Marcos himself is technically one of the “nepo babies” people have been angry against, as his family benefited from his late father’s plundering of billions of dollars from the public treasury.
“Filipinos are angry at nepo babies, but they have the biggest nepo baby sitting in the presidency,” Presto says.