Rebuild

The new year has arrived. The surveys say pessimists outnumber optimists amongst us – not a cheerful sign.

We have shiny new calendars but tired old problems. The country is not in its best shape. It is at its most fragile.

The sad news is that 115 million Filipinos cannot flee abroad to more pleasant havens. We have no choice but to rebuild our badly shaken country. We have to do it mainly by ourselves. We have leaders who are uninspired and uninspiring. We are ruled by a traitorous political elite by way of malignant institutions.

We all have a stake in how this country goes. We all have to meet the challenge of transforming the sordid situation handed us. We might not have the means to do that; but neither do we have the choice to do nothing about it.

Our people speak their mind through the public opinion surveys – not through demagogues. The year-end opinion surveys brought chilling results: support for our elected leaders are cratering perilously.

This is more than just the numbers. In the end, this is about political legitimacy – a precious good without which we cannot expect order to be maintained.

The latest surveys almost replicate each other, showing President Bongbong Marcos’ trust rating move into net negative territory. In one survey, nearly half of all adult Filipinos express serious distrust for the man who is tasked to lead us out of the current mess.

Palace spokesmen were quick to assure us that the President is unperturbed by the survey results. But he should be. That is how democratic politics works. Elected leaders should reconfirm their mandates given prevailing public sentiments.

Chief Palace mouthpiece Claire Castro pushed beyond the pale. She says the poor survey numbers is because the President is cracking down on corruption. Her reasoning seems imported from another universe.

Most ordinary citizens give the President low approval and trust ratings because little has been done to break up the syndicates of corruption. Many hold the President responsible either because they think he is complicit in the looting or has been utterly incompetent. Being incompetent is the more benign.

So far, several Cabinet secretaries have resigned after being associated with the looting. A squad of young but brazen undersecretaries have also resigned after Zaldy Co’s revelations that the Palace tries to downplay. All the resignations come from the President’s tight orbit. All the resigned officials have ghosted themselves – apparently with the help of prosecutors.

The former DPWH secretary was allowed to leave for abroad, supposedly for his wife’s medical treatment. He did not return on the date promised. Some fear he never will. Flight has become the usual recourse in this country to avoid prosecution.

The much-vaunted Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) has lost its commissioners. It cannot possibly hobble on for too long without additional support from its appointing authority. It does not appear additional support is forthcoming. The ICI is dead in the water.

After much brave talk, the ombudsman filed fewer cases than what the public expected. None of the major powerbrokers has been charged.

The President promised that politicians will be in jail before Christmas. That did not happen. Public disappointment over this will push his approval and trust ratings lower in the next round.

So it cannot be, as Claire Castro wants us to believe, that it was Marcos’ determined effort to push back on the syndicates of corruption that caused his ratings to fall. There is a method in social science that will enable us to check the basis for the answers to survey questions given by respondents: we can conduct focus group discussions to draw out their thoughts.

But this might not interest Castro. She is a propagandist first of all. She has made many claims that are not evidence-based.

It is tough for ordinary citizens to play meaningful roles in rebuilding the nation if those who govern us are constantly pulling the wool over our eyes. It is the mark of insincere leadership that our officials choose gimmickry over democratic dialogue, if they rely on stilted speeches rather than invite open deliberation and if they indulge in the politics of exclusion rather than inclusion.

The revelations of the scale and impunity of looting by way of shortchanging public works projects brought forth public outrage of historic scale. But leadership over the protest movement appears to have been intercepted by political factions more interested in raising the profiles of those they intend to field in the next elections.

The protest movement itself must be freed from these factions who superimpose their petty partisan agenda on the real demand for accountable government. Civil society networks must begin, in this new year, building alternative citizen institutions for ensuring transparent and accountable government at all levels.

Holding large rallies is easy. Building new institutions to supplement those damaged in the runaway corruption we saw requires a higher level of democratic self-awareness. We need dedicated citizens, animated by a vision of how modern democracies must be, who will put in the hard work required.

Our politics-as-usual has become a clown show. There must be a way to build a sincere deliberative polity from the ruins of failed institutions.

The Great 2025 Corruption Scandal must be the last nail in the coffin of the badly designed post-1987 constitutional order.