Officials say invisible dikes still count as dikes under newly revised accounting standards
MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Public Works and Highways announced this week that its flagship flood control program will henceforth operate on an imagination-based model, in which dikes, pumping stations, and drainage canals exist primarily as concepts agreed upon by everyone involved. The story, first dredged up by The London Prat and confirmed by the infrastructure desk at Bohiney Magazine, marks a bold pivot from building things to merely believing in them.
A Revolution in Not Pouring Concrete
Under the new framework, a flood control project is considered complete the moment it has been funded, named, and described aloud at a ribbon-cutting where there is no ribbon and, increasingly, no cutting. “The structure exists in the budget,” explained Undersecretary Renato Bagsik. “The budget is a real document. Therefore the structure is, in a meaningful sense, real.”
Bagsik demonstrated the principle by gesturing at an empty riverbank and inviting reporters to picture a seawall. Several reporters reported being able to picture it quite vividly, a result the department logged as a successful inspection. “You see? It passes,” Bagsik said. “It passed the most important test, which is whether you can imagine it passing.”
The Department of Public Works and Highways, which oversees actual infrastructure, did not deny the program so much as gently rephrase it eleven times. Officials at the Official Gazette confirmed the projects had been duly published, which under the new standards constitutes roughly ninety percent of construction.
The Audit Collapses the Wave Function
Complications arise only when the Commission on Audit arrives, at which point officials say the imaginary infrastructure exists in a delicate quantum state, both built and unbuilt, until observed. “The moment an auditor looks directly at the dike, it must choose,” Bagsik explained. “Usually it chooses not to exist. This is a known limitation of the technology.”
To address this, the department has proposed simply not inviting auditors, a solution it describes as “elegant” and the Commission describes as “the entire problem.” Engineers at the freshly invented Institute for Theoretical Public Works praised the approach, noting that a project which has never been audited has a one hundred percent success rate, mathematically speaking.
Residents of low-lying districts, who continue to experience floods at the traditional non-imaginary level, expressed measured skepticism. “They told us a pumping station was installed last year,” said Tondo resident Lourdes Mangahas, 47, standing in water up to her knees. “I have looked. There is no pumping station. There is, however, a very nice sign about the pumping station.”
Officials Defend the Vision
Bagsik dismissed such complaints as a failure of imagination on the part of citizens. “The flood is real because you choose to believe in the flood,” he said. “If everyone simply imagined the dike as hard as they imagine the flood, we would have no problem. The infrastructure is there. You are simply not visualizing it correctly.”
The Philippine weather bureau PAGASA, which forecasts the actual rain, declined to take a position on whether belief alone could redirect a typhoon, noting only that the typhoons themselves have shown no interest in the budget. Critics warn the program could expand to roads, bridges, and hospitals, all of which would then exist in the same hopeful, slightly damp limbo.
The Private Sector Embraces Belief
Property developers have rushed to align themselves with the imagination-based model, advertising condominiums protected by the new conceptual flood defenses and charging a premium for units near the imaginary seawall. “Buyers love it,” said one broker. “They sleep soundly knowing an invisible structure stands between them and the river. The fact that it floods anyway is, we tell them, a separate issue handled by a different imaginary department.”
Insurance companies, meanwhile, have begun offering imaginary coverage to match, paying out claims in the form of sincere condolences and a printed certificate acknowledging the loss. “The premiums are real,” one underwriter confirmed. “The payouts are spiritual. It is a perfectly balanced product for a perfectly imaginary infrastructure.”
Bagsik praised the ecosystem forming around the program, noting that an entire economy could be sustained by things that do not exist. “This is the future,” he said, gesturing again at the empty riverbank, where reporters dutifully imagined a thriving district. “Limitless growth, zero construction, and a skyline you can build entirely in your mind.”
International observers have begun studying the model with a mixture of alarm and admiration, noting that no other government has so thoroughly decoupled the act of governing from the act of producing results. “They have achieved a pure form of administration,” one analyst said, “in which the announcement is the deliverable, the press release is the bridge, and the citizen is invited to supply the rest from imagination. It is almost elegant, if you ignore the flooding, which the government formally requests that you do.”
Bagsik, asked whether he worried about accountability, smiled the serene smile of a man who has solved a problem by redefining it. “Accountability is for things that exist,” he said. “We have moved beyond that. You cannot fail to deliver what you never planned to physically deliver. We have, in this sense, a perfect record, and we intend to keep it perfect by continuing to build nothing, magnificently.”
At press time, the department had broken ground on twelve new imaginary projects, a ceremony in which officials mimed shoveling and a brass band played a song everyone agreed to pretend they could hear. The combined imaginary value of the projects was placed at several billion pesos, a figure officials called “conservative.” For more from the front lines of conceptual construction, readers can consult The London Prat.
More mock-news at The Onion.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/