While people went agog over the celebrity breakups that rocked the tailend of 2023, nothing could have prepared them for the biggest split that could happen or could be happening already at the onset of this new year.

Was it an outright snub that went on between the First Lady and the Vice President?

Will there be serious repercussions after the Bagong Pilipinas kick-off rally and the Davao gathering of thousands?

The Marcos-Duterte fracas are just heating up, and if that should result in a breakup of relative proportions, can this tottering nation withstand the pain?

One thing is for sure — we cannot stand around sniggering at other people’s misfortunes. Schadenfreude just won’t hack it for long when it comes to people holding the reins of our nation.

We cannot wish the President ill when he is the one leading us into an unknown future. At the same time, however, we cannot let alleged shenanigans — as familiar and burdensome as the ever-expanding national debt — pass us by.

Yet that seems to be what the Duterte camp is determined to bring out.

Let’s say that for some perspective we hear out both sides.

First, the Luneta rally has been lambasted for being a waste of the people’s money, but amid the hoopla, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. assured that the Bagong Pilipinas initiative is not, as opined, “a political game plan that caters to a privileged few.” It is, he says, “a master plan for genuine development that will benefit all our people.”

What irks some people about the whole thing is the production it seemed to have taken to make the event possible. A political observer said a simple message to the people, streamed simultaneously, would have been much more effective if the President wished to give a unifying message.

Instead, as a form of criticism, we are seeing cost breakdowns of the big event shared across platforms, as some say it could have been money better funneled into something more useful — like food for the poor, shelter for the homeless, and all the problems we continue to complain about.

People simply resent the simmering political innuendo filling the airwaves once more. Not again, they cry, simmering themselves in the thought of unchanging realities the common folk continue to endure.

Traffic: Philippines is ranked number one. Housing backlog: Moving along but targets way too impossible still. National debt: Unthinkable. Crime rate: Unknown. Corruption meter: Through the roof?

“Kawawa naman ang Pilipinas,” a comment recently heard once more, centers on the latest “breakup” that went on between two powerful camps. There have been words said that would cause the onion-skinned to wither and crumble. There are challenges that have merited similarly cutting rejoinders. There have been snubs that have been hard to miss.

Opposing rallies and sharp tongues coloring our political landscape once more have sadly relegated those celebrity breakups to the background, and not even the Kim Jones-Jericho Rosales split could take our minds off the troubling prospect of national decisions being made under the influence of emotions once more.

Yey for unity, indeed.