Rebuilding the Republic with civic engineers
Filipinos are furious. The flood-control scandal has exposed a national disgrace: a web of ghost projects, shadow contractors, substandard works, and brazen kickbacks that stole billions and left entire communities literally underwater.
Errant civil engineers—compromised by corrupt incentives—built dikes that never existed. Now, civic engineers must rebuild a Republic that is dangerously close to collapse.
But here’s the truth we rarely confront: the Philippines is not suffering from a shortage of civic engineers. We are suffering from a shortage of civic engineers who enter the combat ring of politics.
Civic engineers exist in every barangay, every city hall, every university, and every civil society network. They are planning officers who fix busted systems. Teachers who innovate without fanfare. Scientists who build resilience models ignored by their mayors. Volunteer groups that show LGUs how transparency actually works. Young people who can map 20-year futures better than our national agencies.
We are surrounded by civic engineers. But only a handful ever rise to positions where they can change the system. And only a few survive long enough to matter.
The Philippines has never built a national nursery for civic engineers—a system that identifies them, trains them, supports them, protects them, and launches them into public leadership.
Historically, our civic engineers emerged through heroism or tragedy: Wenceslao Vinzons, Maria Orosa, Edgar Jopson, Ninoy Aquino, Evelio Javier. They rose because the country was in danger. Many died because the country had no way to protect them.
Today, the battlefield is political, economic, and digital—not military. But the risks are still lethal. Political dynasties control local power. Patronage machines punish dissenters. Campaigns cost fortunes civic engineers that cannot raise. Disinformation mobs destroy reputations.
So our civic engineers stay in the shadows—ethical, capable, patriotic, but unwilling to gamble the safety of their children, their parents, or their livelihoods. Some enter the political arena but retreat when singed by fire.
There is a built-in speed and trajectory limiter in Filipino society. It not only slows down our best people; it keeps them out of politics. It ensures that our civic engineers remain brilliant footnotes instead of transformational leaders.
Into this vacuum rushes the familiar spectacle: massive rallies, moral outrage, social media trench warfare. Partisans who all want change are tearing each other apart because they disagree on how to get there. Some want resignations. Some want a transition council.
Some demand mass arrests. A few whisper about coups. The President fans the flames by promising “Christmas in jail.”
Jailing a few does not fix the system that allowed plunder to become predictable. We confuse heat with strategy. We mistake mobilization for movement-building. We imagine that unless the change is immediate, it is meaningless. But as we have painfully learned, outrage cannot engineer anything.
Civic engineers are not saviors—they are system builders. They take public anger and convert it into institutional design, long-term strategy, participatory processes, interoperable networks, durable pressure on Congress, policy blueprints, and futures-oriented reform pathways.
We see glimpses of this: Naga City Mayor Leni Robredo’s data-driven community work. Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong’s governance reforms. Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto’s procurement transparency. But three examples do not build a nation. What we need is a distributed corps of civic engineers—visible in all municipalities, provinces, regions, and sectors, capable of turning mass outrage into long-term political architecture.
If we truly want transformation—not catharsis—we must build the systems that allow civic engineers to rise. This includes: (1) a Political Party Development Act that supports real, programmatic parties; (2) reform of the bastardized party list system, captured by dynasties and proxies; (3) campaign finance rules that don’t require candidates to sell their souls; (4) local civic academies that train future civic engineers in participation, projectization, futures thinking, and coalition-building; and (5) protection mechanisms so good people can enter politics without risking their lives or their children’s well-being. Only then will civic engineers finally exceed the speed limiter that has held them back for generations.
The Philippines does not lack civic engineers. It lacks the ability to grow them, protect them, and deploy them. Until we fix that, we will keep producing ghost projects—and ghost reform movements.
The country is crying out not just for justice, but for architecture. Not just for anger, but for engineering. Errant civil engineers brought us to the brink. Civic engineers will bring us back.
—————-
doyromero@gmail.com
