I have long given up hoping that the Filipino government will one day wake up, shape up, and remember that it exists to serve the people.
That sounds cynical, I know. But how else should ordinary citizens feel after watching the same cycle repeat itself for years? Scandal erupts. Billions are mentioned. Hearings are called. Names are floated. Public anger rises. Then, slowly and conveniently, the story is buried under a new spectacle, a new feud, a new outrage manufactured just in time to make everyone forget the last one.
Now we are being asked to accept another grand political drama: the possible removal or disqualification of a leading 2028 contender before the people even get the chance to decide. Supporters will call it accountability. Opponents will call it political manipulation. But to those of us watching from the outside, it has the familiar smell of power protecting itself.
What makes it unbearable is not only the maneuvering. It is the lack of shame.
These are people who advertise their education, their credentials, their international exposure, their law degrees, their supposed devotion to democracy. Yet when the moment calls for statesmanship, what we get is brute political appetite. No finesse. No restraint. No sense that the country is already exhausted.
Meanwhile, the flood-control scandal and other stories of alleged plunder should have shaken the Republic to its foundations. If billions meant for public protection can vanish while communities drown, that should be enough to paralyze the machinery of government with shame.
But it did not.
Why would it? The powerful know the rhythm. Let the headlines burn for a few days. Let the usual personalities perform outrage. Then let friendly institutions, useful commentators, and a distracted media ecosystem do the slow work of disposal. Not unlike an accomplice tasked with hiding the bodies after the crime, the system knows how to bury what it does not want the public to keep looking at.
And us Filipino masses? We are told to vote better, hope harder, understand the process, respect institutions, and wait for justice. But how many times can a people be told to wait while the political, business, and media oligarchy feast on public money and drive ordinary citizens face first into the ground?
At some point, resignation becomes its own national tragedy.
What should the Filipino masses do now? I honestly do not know. But I know this: accepting hopelessness as normal is exactly what the powerful are counting on.