Strip the money and see who still files candidacy

Humor me. What if politicians in this country earned the same salary as us?

No allowances. No representation funds. No padded consultancy fees. Just the same daily pay that a teacher takes home after class, that a farmer earns after a day in the fields, that a construction worker pockets after laying down the very roads that collapse before the next election cycle.

Would they still run for office? Would dynasties still fight tooth and nail to keep their grip on power?

Because if politics were truly about service, the answer should be yes. But in the Philippines, politics has never really been about service. It has been about procurement. Every project whether roads, bridges, classrooms, hospitals or flood control systems has become less a public good than a private opportunity.

The formula is so predictable it could be printed in a manual. Pad the budget. Downgrade the materials. Deliver just enough for a ribbon-cutting. Pocket the difference. And when the project fails, as it is built to, declare it urgent and build again. Failure is not an accident. It is the business model.

You can see it everywhere. In Palawan, canals are carved out just in time for election season only to crumble with the first heavy rains.

In Metro Manila, hospitals stand without medicine not for lack of funding but because procurement took a detour. Across the country, classrooms collapse before children can even sit down, relief goods shrink before reaching survivors, and roads lead to nowhere but the contractor’s bank account.

These are not lapses. These are the system working exactly as intended.

And yet, come election season, the same surnames are back on the ballot. Fathers hand their seats to sons. Widows inherit their husbands’ positions. Cousins, nephews, and in-laws pop up in neighboring towns. They tell us it is about continuity. What it is really about is keeping the money pipeline inside the family.

Here is the hypocrisy. Politicians tell us their pay is too small for the sacrifices they make. They lament the long nights, the stress, the burdens of leadership.

But if the money is not enough, then why do they cling so tightly to power? Why do their children, their wives, their siblings line up for a turn?

Ordinary Filipinos know what not enough looks like. It is choosing between rice and medicine, between tuition and electricity, between jeepney fare and dinner. Politicians do not live in that reality.

So humor me again. Imagine them stripped of everything excess. No pork. No padded budgets. No contracts to carve up. No kickbacks disguised as consultancy fees. Just the same wage that the people they claim to serve take home at the end of the day. Would they still line up for candidacy? Would dynasties still exist? You already know the answer.

Politics pays but not in the salaries written in law. It pays in contracts, commissions, and kickbacks. It pays in the steady inheritance of influence, in the transformation of public service into family property. That is why dynasties flourish. That is why they never let go.

And who pays the real cost? It is not them. It is the child sitting in a crumbling classroom. The patient turned away from an empty ward. The farmer whose crops drown because a drainage canal was never built to last. Ordinary Filipinos foot the bill for corruption dressed up as progress.

This is why I no longer believe their speeches. I have seen them denounce corruption in public while dividing up budgets in private. I have heard them rail against mining while quietly signing permits. Their words never match their deeds.

Their promises dissolve in the first storm.

Which leaves us with one floodgate left. The ballot.

If we keep rewarding hypocrisy, we will keep drowning not only in floodwaters but in corruption. If we want real change, we must stop listening to slogans and start demanding receipts. Who were your contractors? Why did your projects fail? Where did the money go? And maybe the simplest question of all. Would you still run for office if you were paid minimum wage?

Because if politics were stripped of profit, if public office truly meant service and sacrifice, very few would stay. And that alone tells us everything we need to know.

Rain and other disasters will always come. That we cannot change. But whether corruption rises higher than the floodwaters depends on us, on whether we are finally willing to see politics for what it has become. Not a calling. Not service. But a racket, one where the rest of us pay the price.