No more half-truths

By Herman M. Lagon

We watch the hearings like we watch a storm. We keep one eye on the radar, the other on the living room floor in case water creeps in. Lately the noise is not just thunder. Contractors wave ledgers. Senators trade punchlines. And too many questions stop at 2022—as if floods began only yesterday—when the same firms, the same budget lines, and the same flood-control craze have been around since at least 2016. Pasig Mayor Vico Sotto says the quiet part out loud: the job now is to sift half-truths and tricks, and to stay alert. If a ledger is a map of wrongdoing, then show the whole route, not only the streets that end at today’s enemies. Rain does not respect cut-off years. Neither should our questions.

Selection is now a tactic. The Discaya couple say they started writing down kickbacks in 2022, but their flood-control work began years earlier. That leaves a six-year hole wide enough to fit a river. If payoffs oiled the machine “from the start,” where are the receipts from 2016 to 2021. Why does the list tilt to House names while the Senate looks like a ghost floor in the same building. And the math limps. If profits were only two to three percent, how do you brag about eleven digits later. You do not hit billions by nibbling the edges unless volumes are absurd, costs are padded, or stories do not line up. People do not need spreadsheets to see the gap. They see it every time a floodwall cracks before habagat ends.

Rules matter, too. Congress can press hard, but it cannot skip steps. Before you call someone evasive, you weigh all the evidence, let people explain, and then decide. The point of these hearings is to help write better laws, not to stage a demolition job. At the same time, when a resource person dodges, contradicts records, or feeds the public with convenient memory loss, committees should push back. Tough, yes. Theatrical, no. Exact, not vengeful. That discipline is what gives results weight outside the session hall.

Senator Kiko Pangilinan says the standard plainly: tell the whole truth or do not ask for protection. No “edited” timelines. No “cropped” lists. If a witness wants the shield of the State, the State deserves the full picture—names, dates, amounts—going back to the first bid, whether that was 2011, 2012, or 2016. Business groups ask for the same thing. So do families in knee-deep water. Accountability by slices only feeds cynicism. Whole truth is not poetry. It is policy.

There is a practical playbook. Anticorruption studies warn about the usual red flags: repeat winners, sudden change orders, identical costings, big payments near year-end, vague variations, poor site performance. The fix is boring and effective: open the records across the project life cycle, match payments with physical work, and verify on the ground. If the budget says river walls, then barangays should see river walls—straight, sturdy, and still standing after a week of rain. If the books say pumps, then pumps should run during brownouts. “Ghost embankments” should not exist anywhere except in jokes.

We all know half-truths without citing a handbook. We live with barangay roads that sink after one school year, classroom ceilings that leak on exam day, and “asphalt overlays” that feel thin under a tricycle tire. As a teacher who handled homerooms, I used to tell students that honesty is not only refusing to lie; it is refusing to hide a missing page. A ledger that begins when power changes hands looks like a missing page. Parents in relief lines know the difference between “kulang ang budget” and “kinulang dahil may bawas.” They do not quote procurement codes, but they can count days a subdivision stays under water. When a hearing skips years, they hear what is not being said.

So what would a credible clean-up look like. Start where both sides accidentally agree: flood-control took off by 2016. Build a full timeline from there. Pull every project list, every change order, and every right-of-way payment. Inspect random sites unannounced. Put DPWH insiders and contractor accountants under oath with documents in hand, not just microphones. Where the law allows, trace bank flows. Publish a simple, searchable database—budgeted, obligated, paid, accomplished—so journalists, teachers, and even senior high students can check if the wall in Purok Mabini exists on the ground or only on paper. None of this is radical. It is just evidence work.

There is also a habit we teach in values education: pause, review, choose. Strip the theology and you get a civic skill—check your bias, then check your proof. In hearings, that means refusing the easy script that only today’s opponents could be guilty and only yesterday’s allies could be clean. It means acknowledging that some senators ask hard questions, that some contractors may actually cooperate, and that witnesses have rights. It also means holding the line on selective disclosure. Immunity deals should not be buffet-style. You cannot ask for a shield while hiding the years that hurt your case.

This is not a hunt for one camp. It is repair work for a system that keeps drowning both people and trust. Mayor Sotto’s call for vigilance and Senator Pangilinan’s plea for the whole truth fit well together. Civil society, educators, engineers, and small business owners want the same thing: stop editing the record. If payoffs began in 2016, write 2016. If they swelled in 2022, write 2022. If names run across parties, then write across parties. We do not drain a city with half a plan. We do not clean a sector with half a story.

Here is the wisest way to read the storm: believe the water. Floods do not lie. If billions in flood control washed through our books, the proof should be dry floors, not wet classrooms. Sift the half-truths, follow the money, and finish the record. The public can live with hard facts. What it cannot live with, for much longer, is edited truth and rising water.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a ”student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.