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For years we Filipinos have been praised for our “resilience.” A typhoon comes, our homes are flooded, our crops are destroyed, our roads become rivers, and somehow we pick ourselves up again. We smile for the cameras, clean the mud from our houses, rebuild what we can, and wait for the next disaster. Sometimes we even shrug our shoulders and call these calamities “acts of God.”
I think it is time to go beyond resiliency—to defiance.
Not defiance of nature. Not defiance of the law. But the collective defiance of citizens who refuse to accept as normal what should never have been allowed to become normal.
Just a few days ago in Angeles City, CCTV captured 25-year-old Reiner Novero walking along a flooded sidewalk with an umbrella. Suddenly he disappeared. An open drainage canal, completely hidden beneath the floodwater, swallowed him. The current swept him away. His body was recovered about two kilometers downstream. How can a pedestrian possibly protect himself from a death trap he cannot even see?
Then there is NLEX. I myself spent almost five miserable hours trapped in traffic because of the recurring flooding around San Simon—eventually having to pee into a bottle because there was simply nowhere to go. Sedan drivers were approaching floodwaters their vehicles could not safely cross. This is not some totally unforeseen event. That section has flooded before. We pay substantial toll fees precisely for a safe, properly maintained and professionally managed expressway. Why should motorists simply endure the same ordeal year after year?
And look around us. This August alone, floods and landslides have killed more than 30 people. Millions have been affected. Bridges and roads have been damaged. As of today, the government reports ₱6.16 billion in infrastructure damage and ₱2.32 billion in agricultural losses. Central Luzon alone accounts for hundreds of flooded areas.
Yes, climate change is real. Rainfall is becoming more extreme. On August 29–30, Metro Manila received about 186 millimeters of rain in just 23 hours. We cannot command the rain to stop.
But climate change cannot become the convenient new version of “act of God”—an excuse for every flooded highway, clogged drainage system, denuded watershed, unsafe manhole, failed flood-control project and preventable death.
There comes a point when resilience becomes dangerous because it teaches us merely to endure.
Defiance asks questions. Who designed this? Who built it? Who inspected it? Who maintained it? How much did taxpayers pay for it? Why does the same place flood every year? Where did the flood-control money go? Who knew the danger and failed to warn the public? And when negligence is established, who will be held accountable?
Perhaps it is time for something more than angry Facebook posts. Perhaps we need collective citizens’ action—motorists filing complaints before regulatory agencies, communities demanding public disclosure of flood-control projects and budgets, citizens seeking legal remedies where negligence has caused injury or loss, and taxpayers insisting that public officials and private concessionaires answer for services for which we have already paid.
Filipino resilience is a beautiful virtue. But resilience should never mean passive acceptance of incompetence, corruption or neglect.
After every disaster, we are told to be resilient.
This time, let us also be defiant.
Let us refuse to normalize preventable suffering. Let us demand answers. Let us demand accountability. And where the law allows it, let us act together as citizens to hold accountable those who fail in their duty to protect the public.
Beyond resiliency: collective citizens’ action.
