I'LL be the one to say this: What the hell is happening in this Godforsaken country?
(Pardon the explicits and the foul words, but the sheer absurdity of the situation has made it that damn cringy—and polite language no longer fits a reality this broken.)
It is the question on the lips of every commuter stranded on a flooded highway, every parent staring at a soaring grocery bill, and every citizen watching the evening news with a mixture of horror and exhaustion. It is a vulgar question, born of deep exasperation, but it is the only honest one left to ask. To look at the Philippines today is to witness a masterclass in governance by distraction, where political theater has completely replaced public service.
While the country quietly rots from the inside out, the national stage has devolved into an elite, hyper-partisan cage match. In the Senate, a weeks-long political crisis has paralyzed the legislative process. Simultaneously, Vice President Sara Duterte faces a historic, multi-pronged second impeachment trial over allegations of mismanaged public funds and spectacular public meltdowns. Nearby, the shadow of the International Criminal Court looms over Senator Ronald "Bato" dela Rosa, whose evasion of an international arrest warrant over the previous administration's "war on drugs" has turned the upper chamber into a high-stakes sanctuary.
It is a gripping, grotesque drama. It is also entirely beside the point.
While the elite feast on press conferences and constitutional crises, the material reality of the country is drowning. Consider the recent revelations surrounding the nation’s multi-billion-peso flood control program. Despite a staggering ₱1.9 trillion poured into flood management over the last 15 years, a massive scandal has exposed a network of "ghost" projects and substandard construction. When the rain pours, the money vanishes, and the public is left to swim. Just this week, Malacañang casually admitted that they cannot guarantee a flood-free rainy season. It was a stunning concession of incompetence, wrapped in bureaucratic resignation.
You do not need a doctorate in political science to see the fraud; you just need to wear boots to work because the main highway is a river. You don't have to be a political expert to realize you aren't as dumb as the people seated in power.
The tragic irony of the Philippine democratic experiment is that this dysfunction cannot be blamed entirely on a single faction. The political spectrum offers no refuge, leaving the public with absolutely no one left to choose from. The country is fractured into rigid, tribal fiefdoms: the DDS loyalists who long for the authoritarian iron fist of the past; the "Pinklawan" opposition, often trapped in its own echo chamber of moral righteousness; and the Marcos loyalists, riding on the glossy branding of a "New Philippines" (Bagong Pilipinas) that looks remarkably like the neglected old one.
Is there any hope that this country will rise from this crap?
I don't know. The standard, textbook answer is to point toward the ballot box—to say that our future relies entirely on the voters. But then again, we must confront the bitter, cyclical truth: these very people are the reason why we are trapped in this hellhole again. We, the electorate, are the ultimate architects of our own misery. We voted for the circus—so why are we shocked that we’re governed by clowns?
We love to complain about the performance, yet we keep buying tickets to the show. We stand in the rising floodwaters and curse the heavens, entirely forgetting whose names we shaded on the ballots that put these political acrobats and court jesters in power. We treat national elections like a low-tier popularity contest, voting for the loudest voices, the grandest family legacies, or the most entertaining TikTok dances, and then act completely flabbergasted when the government behaves like a cheap sideshow. If the center ring is in total chaos, it is because we are the ones who handed over the keys to the tent.
The tragic cycle of Philippine politics is that the electorate suffering in the waist-deep waters is the exact same electorate that routinely returns these dynastic actors to power, trading long-term structural reform for short-term patronage. Until the Filipino voter demands an infrastructure that works over an impeachment trial that entertains, the water will keep rising. And the country will remain exactly where its leaders—and its voters—have left it: trapped in a manufactured disaster, watching the clowns fight while the tent slowly fills with water.
- Greg Cortez
