Every presidency faces a defining crisis. For Ferdinand Marcos Jr., it is not foreign policy or inflation. It is corruption: the kind that stains not just budgets, but reputations. The flood-control scandal has exposed ghost projects, padded contracts, and alleged kickbacks so audacious they amount to industrial-scale theft.

And at the center of the storm is not just the Department of Public Works and Highways, or a handful of contractors. It is his own political family: cousin Martin Romualdez, recently resigned Speaker of the House, and other congressional allies who form the backbone of his legislative power.

For a Marcos who has spent his presidency trying to cleanse the family name of dictatorship and plunder, this is more than a governance problem. It is existential.

The Marcos project has always been about rehabilitation: to show that the family, once disgraced by Martial Law, could govern with competence and legitimacy. “Build Better More” was not only infrastructure policy; it was reputation strategy. Every bridge, every highway, every dike was supposed to demonstrate that the Marcoses could be trusted again.

But flood-control contracts turned rackets now threaten to rebrand that agenda as “Build Better Kickbacks.” History’s ghosts are back, and they are not subtle.

So far, the Palace has called corruption “horrible” and floated commissions and audits. Romualdez thundered about “lies” and “malicious name-dropping.” Other lawmakers chorused denials.

But Filipinos have seen this movie before. Hearings that end in nothing. Commissions that write but do not bite. The longer BBM clings to this script, the more he becomes not a reformer but a bystander: the President who presided over a crumbling state while pretending the foundations were firm.

The Ultimate Sacrifice

If Marcos Jr. truly wants to redeem his name, he must make the sacrifice his father never made: choose legacy over loyalty.

That means choosing country over cousin — cutting off Romualdez and the congressional clique that turned flood control into a cash machine. It means allowing the Ombudsman, COA, and DOJ to prosecute without interference, even if convictions land close to home. It means killing the system of “insertions” that greases congressional politics, even at the cost of losing a pliant House.

And most dangerous of all, it means subjecting his own administration’s projects to forensic audit, knowing that anomalies may surface.

This is not politically convenient. It may even be politically fatal. But it is the only way to prove that Marcos Jr. is serious about accountability and serious about separating his legacy from the sins of the past.

The truth is simple: BBM cannot have both. He cannot cleanse the Marcos name while shielding his cousin. He cannot preach reform while preserving insertions. He cannot rebuild trust while clinging to the same old rituals of denial.

He must decide whether he wants to be remembered as the Marcos who dared to break with family for the sake of country, or the Marcos who drowned in the same flood of corruption that consumed his father’s regime.

Legacies are not built by slogans. They are built by sacrifice. The flood-control scandal is not just BBM’s governance test. It is his ultimate test as a Marcos.

Family or legacy. Protection or redemption. Survival or history.

The waters are rising. The choice is his.