Ace Aguirre was just two bites into his oatmeal on the morning of Nov. 4 when he noticed something strange: mud had seeped onto the living room floor of his bungalow in Cotcot, a village in the Philippines’ Cebu province.
The moments that followed will forever remain in Aguirre’s memory. His living room furniture floating; a few terrifying minutes when he wasn’t sure he’d be able to open the front door; his son praying to God as the water rose to their chests; his daughter, who doesn’t know how to swim, perched high on a pole as water and cars rushed past, inches from her feet.
“I don’t know how we managed to survive. One detail that didn’t go our way and many of us could have died,” Aguirre told CNN.
That morning, Typhoon Kalmaegi dumped more than a month of rain, swelling Cebu’s rivers and waterways and triggering catastrophic floods that killed more than 230 people nationwide.
One of the dead was Aguirre’s neighbor, a mother of two, who drowned when she got stuck in the kitchen. He had tried to save her but couldn’t get her out in time.
Torrential rains and deadly floods in the disaster-prone tropical Philippines are not new. But revelations in recent months that politicians, officials and contractors have looted billions of dollars from the national program that is supposed to mitigate their effects have roiled the country.
Before the deadly flood, a group of Cebu citizens called for an audit of flood control projects along the Cotcot River, upstream from where Aguirre lives, according to local media.
The scandal involved dozens of parliamentarians and high-ranking officials who allegedly received kickbacks to award contracts. The revelations sparked huge youth-led anti-government protests against corruption and wealthy elites, similar to those seen this year in Indonesia and Nepal.
Aguirre had been watching the political drama unfolding far away in the capital, Manila, for months, but he didn’t expect it to arrive on his doorstep.
“Suddenly you become a direct victim,” he said. “It hits differently.”
The November floods prompted Cebu City Governor Pamela Baricuatro to call for an investigation into the province’s 26 billion pesos ($443 million) flood control projects that officials in Manila admitted “should have been working” by the time of the disaster.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. later visited the region and promised to clear and clean the waterways and unclog the drainage systems in time for the rainy season next year.
The previous July, he revealed that a government flood control program worth more than 545 billion pesos ($9.2 billion) had been marred by corruption.
He said an internal audit found that many of the 10,000 projects his government has overseen since coming to power in 2022 were built using substandard materials or none at all, he said, referring to the projects as “ghost projects.”
CNN has reached out to the Philippine government for comment.
When Marcos Jr revealed the fraud, he “opened a can of worms” that has since gotten out of his control, said Sol Iglesias, an associate professor of political science at the University of the Philippines.
This aerial photo shows houses damaged by typhoon Kalmaegi in Talisay, Cebu province on November 5, 2025. – Jam Sta Rosa/AFP/Getty Images
House and Senate testimony revealed “an entire system of looting and corruption that was facilitated by the very agencies that were responsible for budgeting, planning, implementing, monitoring and verifying the financial soundness of these infrastructures,” Iglesias said.
In September, Finance Secretary Raph Recto told a Senate hearing that up to 118.5 billion pesos ($2 billion) in flood control funding may have been lost to corruption over the past two years, according to the Associated Press news agency.
Marcos Jr vowed to jail at least 37 congressmen and other officials responsible for the scams by Christmas, and seven have been thrown behind bars so far. The government also froze about 12 billion pesos ($204 million) in assets of people linked to the scandal.
The scandal galvanized ordinary Filipinos, who took to the streets to protest decades of unchecked corruption.
“This is the last straw for the Filipino people,” said Tiffany Faith Brillante, head of Youth Rage Against Corruption in the Philippines, which has been involved in the protests.
Filipino activists protest outside the presidential palace on Human Rights Day in Manila, Philippines on December 10, 2025. – Eloisa Lopez/Reuters
“Corruption today is no longer just a symptom of poor governance,” she said. “It is deeply rooted in the way power is held in government, the way budgets are allocated and the way accountability is consistently avoided.”
Marcos Jr insisted that he did not know about the fraud committed. He positioned himself as an anti-corruption crusader, shaming those responsible for corruption and encouraging protesters.
But as more senior officials were implicated in the scandal, some pointed the finger back at the president.
One of those people is Zaldy Co, a former ally of Marcos Jr and ex-chairman of the House appropriations committee, who became one of the central figures accused in the scandal. He fled the country and is currently a fugitive.
While in hiding, he posted a series of explosive videos on his social media account, accusing Marcos Jr and members of his family of profiting from corruption – charges the president has denied.
Marcos’ family members were also caught up in the drama. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, a cousin of Marcos, resigned as House Speaker in September over the controversy, although he denied any involvement in the scandal.
Beyond the scale of the alleged theft, what made this scandal hit so hard is that for many Filipinos it feels like history is repeating itself, said Aries Arugay, a Filipino political scientist and visiting senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute think tank in Singapore.
“Corruption and the Marcoses are almost synonymous in Philippine politics,” Arugay said.
Marcos Jr’s father, dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr, ruled the Philippines with an iron fist from 1965 until his ouster in 1986, with the country living under martial law for about half that time. His regime committed systemic human rights abuses and engaged in widespread corruption, stealing an estimated $10 billion in public funds.
The flood control scandal reminded Filipinos of the dark days many lived under Marcos Sr. One of the biggest anti-corruption protests took place on a significant date, September 21, when in 1972 Marcos Sr imposed martial law.
Marcos Jr’s landslide victory in 2022 marked an extraordinary comeback for the famous political family, which critics said was made possible in part by disinformation campaigns that whitewashed the history of the Marcos era.
And although officials have warned that the looting of the flood prevention program may have begun under Marcos’ predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, the disparity between the lifestyles of the elite and ordinary Filipinos has been a source of anger under the current president.
PHILIPPINE President Ferdinand Marcos Jr speaks during a press conference and at the Malacanagan Palace in Manila on November 13,
Social media videos posted by the children of politicians and wealthy entrepreneurs flaunting their lavish lifestyles have added salt to the wounds of angry citizens, Arugay said.
“When people are submerged in floodwater, the politicians are in Paris riding in their private jets,” he said.
This backlash against so-called “nepo children” mirrors similar anti-corruption protests in Asia this year, including in Indonesia and Nepal, where Gen-Z-led protests toppled the government.
Like those protests, young people have been some of the loudest voices calling for accountability in the Philippines.
“We are inheriting the consequences of systemic corruption and abuse in our country if the government continues to steal, oppress and ignore the people,” Brillante said.
“We really want to prosecute and jail every official involved in corruption,” Brillante said.
“President Marcos cannot be spared because at the end of the day, he is the one who signs and approves the national budget every year.”
While public confidence in Marcos Jr has waned, he is unlikely to meet the same fate as his father, who was ousted in a public uproar.
Marcos Jr is more than halfway through his six-year term, and Philippine presidents have unique term limits, so he will not be eligible for re-election in 2028.
“We didn’t see the equivalent of a smoke weapon,” Iglesias said.
“But if (we have) that smoking gun, like, evidence that he directly benefited financially from this corruption, then I think that’s going to push the administration over the edge. Right now, it’s jarring.”
Filipinos march alongside an effigy depicting Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr during an anti-corruption protest in Manila, Philippines on November 30, 2025. – Lisa Marie David/Getty Images
Recent public opinion polls by the firm WR Numero found Marcos Jr’s satisfaction rating at 21 percent in November, down 14 percent from August.
For someone who came so close to losing everything, Aguirre is optimistic and grateful. But he is not optimistic that this wave of public momentum will produce any significant change in the Philippines.
“With our resilience, we can still move forward, but the quality of life will still be the same.”
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