Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano on Thursday urged Filipinos to resist the “distractions” pulling attention away from the unresolved flood control scandal and instead help “disrupt” the massive corruption that has become normal in the country.
“The willingness to investigate almost everything and everyone seems matched only by the reluctance — nay, the refusal — to fully pursue the one issue that deserves the deepest and most sustained scrutiny of our time: the flood control scandal,” Cayetano said in a reflection published on his Facebook page on July 16, 2026.
The post came as several Senate Minority members faced separate legal cases and investigations. The latest is the National Bureau of Investigation’s planned probe into alleged irregularities in projects for the 2019 Southeast Asian Games, which Cayetano helped organize as then-chair of the Philippine SEA Games Organizing Committee (PHISGOC).
Cayetano recalled how President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s “Mahiya naman kayo!” statement in last year’s State of the Nation Address initially raised hopes that the government would finally confront corruption in flood control projects.
He said it could have opened the way to determine how the corruption happened, who allowed it, and how the country could prevent it from happening again.
“But somewhere along the way, disruption became distraction,” he said.
Cayetano likened the succeeding controversies and investigations to a magician directing the audience’s attention away from where the real trick is happening.
“While everyone watches one hand, the real trick happens with the other. And like every successful illusion, it only works if the audience keeps looking where it is told to look,” he said.
He lamented how some leaders in politics, religion, business, and media had joined in helping sustain the distractions.
“When the watchdogs join the attack dogs, we are really in trouble,” he said.
Cayetano noted how corruption, which has been tolerated for years by some of the elite who either benefit from it or remain insulated from its effects, has led to “back to back to back” crises.
“The elite — business, religious, political, and civil society leaders — are not quick to ask for change. ‘OK naman tayo’ is repeatedly heard and said behind closed doors,” Cayetano said.
“Then what we have reaped starts germinating, and the time of reckoning begins. Moral, economic, and social crises hit us, back to back to back,” he added.
To break the cycle, he called on all leaders and Filipinos across all sectors to “resist the politics of distraction,” acknowledge what is truly happening in the country no matter how painful, and take part in rebuilding it.
“If we truly desire national transformation, then we must resist the politics of distraction and embrace the disruption that truth requires,” he said.
“Not disruption for the sake of conflict, but disruption that exposes corruption. Disruption that restores trust, that strengthens our institutions, that prepares the ground so future generations can inherit a nation built not on illusion, but on truth,” he added.