And here comes the indelible fact. The Trust Rating of Pres. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. plummeted to -3% amidst the magma of corruption and people’s perception of the ineptness of leadership that brought the country into the brink of a failed state.
The nation is in the murk of corruption unimaginable in any point of history and the people’s rage and the survey done by the Social Weather Station (SWS) has confirmed it in no uncertain terms.
Marcos failure as a leader is compounded by his allies in the Legislative Department. The House of Romuldez has not changed despite his departure as Speaker. There is hardly any alteration of agenda except that both the hands of the law and the Supreme Judge had confirmed the conviction of the ACT Rep. France Castro and the demise of Antipolo Rep. Romeo Acop whose fame of sending journalists to detention and fear is now entered with his bones.
Marcos is likewise dragged down to the morass of perdition by the makings in his own immediate household and in the confines of his own office. He stoically denied his involvement in the dud impeachmment move against the person who brought him up to apogee of power. His son, House Majority Floor Leader Sandro Marcos, however, was the first to sign the Articles of Impeachment.
In the recent developments involving the series of investigations of scandalous ghost and substandard flood control projects that brought this government into the quagmire of financial and moral bankruptsy, we witnessed the departure of former DPWH Sec. Manuel Bonoan, who, under his watch of the Department of Public Works and Highways, the grand heist of the people’s tax of over a trillion pesos budgeted and inserted by the unrepentant characters in Congress and the Executive Department happened.
Zaldy Co, Chairman of the powerful House Committee on Appropriation, “was made” to spend a prolonged vacation in Europe only to be told never to return. It was obvious that Zaldy Co finally had his Damascus. He spilled the biblical truths behind the massive corruption in government in a series of video message that implicated, in no uncertain terms, the involvement of Marcos, Romualdez and himself in the grand larceny that involved members of Congress, the Office of the President, DPWH officials and the contractors.
So far there were unexplainable and weird events that happened. Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin and Department of Budget and Management Amenah Pangandaman “resigned”. Members of the Independent Commission on Infrastructure is down to a literally skeletal force and virtually dead. Acop is gone and so is DPWH USec Catalina Cabral in a mysterious death that had stirred so much speculation.
Still Marcos has not ran out of surprises. He appointed Ralph Recto as Executive Secretary. This despite his surreptitious and infamous transfers of trust funds of PhilHealth and PDIC into the government treasury in an attempt to prop the bankrupt bureaucracy. Recto justified his act as legal, moral and by his own shameless assessment calls it economically sound. The Supreme Court intervened and ordered the government to restore the ₱60-billion to PhilHealth. In another act of brazen tomfoolery, the government complied by including the amount in the proposed budget for 2026. It’s plunder done twice thru legislation. We still don’t know what happened to the sale of 25 tons of gold from the vaults of the Central Bank. Legal luminaries branded Recto’s economic solutions plunderous.
All these summed up to -3% Trust Rating of Bongbong Marcos against VP Sara Duterte’s gain of 31%! Marcos lost the trust of Visayas, Mindanao and even in Metro Manila which spells disaster. VP Sara has weathered all the derogations by a phalanx of black propagandists of diverse species including a drug addict in soutane who claimed to have been rehabilitated.
Still there is a glimmer of hope. We see a crop of emerging young leaders in whom the nation pins its hope. Congressman Tito Barzaga did not relent in his attacks against the corrupt in government that led to his suspension for telling the truth. Rep. Leandro Leviste who intrepidly divulged the unconscionable and brazen corruption in DPWH and the insertions of multi-million peso-insertions in the government budget. The silent and indefatigable Senator Bong Go, Mayors Vico Sotto of Pasig and Baste Duterte of Davao … to name a few.
Not so young but politically matured and has survived the organized nasty and cruel attacks against her but standing firmly on her ground is Vice Pres. Sara Z. Duterte. Amidst the climate of hopelessness and unnerving corruption that had dumped President Marcos on the gutter, there is an overwhelming trust on her by people from Luzon, Metro Manila, Visayas and Mindanao as SWS survey had shown. It is that trust that binds the hopeful nation.
Happy New Year!
