There is a special category of infrastructure failure reserved for projects that are defeated by the very condition they were designed to prevent. The Philippines has achieved it at scale. Tens of thousands of protesters descended on Manila for a three-day rally after investigations revealed that thousands of flood-defence projects across the country — built in one of the most typhoon-intensive archipelagos on Earth — were constructed from substandard materials or existed solely as line items in a budget. The floods, notably, continued to arrive on schedule.

The scandal implicates allies of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and has generated the kind of sustained street anger that the Philippines, uniquely among Southeast Asian nations, has twice converted into presidential removals. The phrase 'enormous evil' was used by protesters, which in the context of Philippine political rhetoric represents not hyperbole but the precise technical term for billing the government for a seawall and delivering a spreadsheet.

The cruelty of the specific failure is not abstract. Ordinary Filipinos in flood-prone areas have structured their domestic routines around inadequate drainage — moving furniture, elevating possessions, memorising flood cycles — while contractors collected fees for defences that existed primarily in accounting software. The hopeful resident quoted by BBC saying he trusts that 'funds will be used honestly' in future projects is either the most optimistic man in Southeast Asia or has not been following the budget hearings.