4 bills cuff destabilization moves

There may be opposing thoughts to my observation that President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., has somehow survived the first wave of efforts to destabilize his administration. In the days prior to the September 21 mass action labeled the Trillion Peso March, I saw the surge of social media posts accusing the president of massive corruption. The words boldly written in those posts were RESIGN, RESIGN, RESIGN and more. To me, the language of the attacks so ranged from indecent to outright libel that I had to imagine that many of those social abusers were trolls and paid hacks. They anchored their supposed discordant calls on their belief that the president has miserably failed to govern.

There were, of course, those who, even if they were also using strong words of indignation, demonstrated a judicious conscience to just let President Marcos continue to rule until the end of his term. Just the same, amidst all the ramblings, I braced myself against a possible specter of a revolutionary government being forcibly established with the evolving November 30 march. When the EDSA I kind of upheaval did not eventually occur as forecast by anti-Marcos groups to happen on November 30, I breathed a sigh of relief. No rev-gov emerged.

I must say that the creation of the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) thru President Marcos Jr.’s Executive Order No. 94 (2025) and the much publicized investigation on the flood control project scandal both helped the president stem the rising tide of national discontent. When names of otherwise untouchable personalities began to be unearthed as part of the band of systemic corruption, the poor ratings of the president started to improve. Senators Francis Joseph "Chiz" Guevara Escudero, Emmanuel Joel Jose Villanueva, Jose Pimentel Ejercito Jr., (known as Jinggoy Estrada), were such high strung politicians, along with bureaucratic officials who were reported as cabals of graft and corruption. Conversely, on the brink of their indictment, and the expected issuance of multiple warrants of arrests against the suspected corrupt people, president’s performance score improved.

Believe me, the announcement, the other day, that President Marcos Jr., asked Congress to prioritize the approval of four bills, namely: first, Anti-Political Dynasty Bill, second, Independent Peoples’ Commission Act, third, Party-List System Reform Act and fourth, Citizens Access and Disclosure of Expenditures for National Accountability Act, will surely put on hold all destabilization moves, if not entirely put a dagger into the hearts and minds of both latent and active power grabbers.

Why? What is the effect of these four legislative measures if acted upon and passed quickly by Congress? They are the embodiment of the kind of laws our county needs to rise from the quagmire of corruption. Let me take just one - the Anti Political Dynasty Act. Identify the municipalities, cities and provinces where family members occupy top levels of administration and you can find that they are the worst performing government units! In the senate, can you really believe that the Tulfo brothers, the Cayetano siblings, the Estrada-Ejercito half-brothers and the two Villars, do not practice the concept of charity beginning at home?

The presidential endorsement of these needed measures is a move in the right direction. The process of passing statutes to fight corruption is tedious as it is long. But Lao Tzu said that “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Our people can still wait for these bills to become laws and in the interregnum preserve Marcos Jr.’s presidency as we can return our political saber safely in its scabbard.