Just when it seemed the Philippine flood control corruption scandal had achieved its maximum carrying capacity of outrage, the Senate added gunfire. Rounds were discharged inside the Philippine Senate building during hearings into the scandal, with officials declining to specify who fired them or why, in what may be the most literal illustration of how contentious the proceedings had become. Nobody was reported killed, which in the context of Philippine legislative drama qualifies as a restrained outcome.

The scandal has acquired the additional dimension of 'nepo babies' — a term that the BBC deployed in a headline with the confidence of a publication that has decided formal euphemism has run its course. The flood control projects were awarded through networks in which family relationships to officials appear to have functioned as the primary procurement criterion, producing infrastructure that performed accordingly. The term captures something that 'nepotism' does not: the specific quality of watching the children of the well-connected inherit both the contracts and the impunity.

Filipinos have ousted presidents before for less comprehensively documented malfeasance, and the political arithmetic of the Marcos administration — which arrived with significant electoral mandate and is now navigating simultaneous corruption scandals, senatorial gunfire, and a restive public — is being recalculated in real time. The flood waters, for their part, remain indifferent to the hearings.