Every fourth Monday of July, the script replays itself with fidelity: starched barongs, over-glammed ternos, whardened security cordons, and a theatrical stage inside Batasang Pambansa built not for candor, but for control. Here we go again — oddly addicted to displays of hierarchy that reek more of Spanish-era pomp than people-powered governance.

Yes, the State of the Nation Address (SoNA) is billed as a national ritual, but, in truth, it’s a pageant of power. This year’s production, however, carries more than its usual quota of political baggage and behind-the-scenes scheming.

At the Senate, the air is thick with backroom plotting, or so sources say. Will Chiz Escudero still be wielding the gavel by showtime? Or will former Senate President Migz Zubiri succeed in pushing Tito Sotto to reprise his old role?

Zubiri has accused Escudero of “dictatorial tendencies” — a phrase that might have meant something in another era, but now signals a power struggle between men who’ve all happily played autocrat at one point or another.

Over at the House, Speaker Martin Romualdez’s iron grip is showing signs of rust. The whispers have softened, sure — but they haven’t gone away. In both legislative chambers, where loyalty doesn’t mean fudge, a “solid majority” usually means someone just struck a slightly better deal behind closed doors.

And it’s not the first time we’ve seen this kind of political cockfight. Remember 2018, when Rodrigo Duterte’s SoNA was delayed by hours because Pantaleon Alvarez was booted out as Speaker?

Speaking of cockpits, the literal ones remain conspicuously empty. Over a hundred sabungeros who vanished during Duterte’s term are still missing. Maybe one day Taal Volcano will erupt again — not with lava, but with the bones of the sabungeros from the lake that surrounds it.

Hovering over this year’s SoNA is the specter of the possible impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, serving both as a constitutional and a stress test for the Marcos dynasty.

This as after the government agreed to cooperate with the International Criminal Court’s probe of Rodrigo Duterte, can it now politically finish off his daughter, the vice president, by way of a guilty verdict in the Senate?

Well, so much for the unity brand under which Marcos and the younger Duterte ran for the country’s top posts in 2022. Halfway through this administration, the only thing unified is the elite’s grip on power.

Expect the usual SoNA buzzwords: transformation, progress, resilience. GDP growth hit 5.4 percent in Q1 2025; inflation dropped to 1.4 percent as of April — but only if you exclude rice prices and water bills. The national debt? P16.68 trillion and climbing like it’s gunning for a Guinness World Record.

Meanwhile, teachers are still waiting for long-promised pay raises, health workers are still chasing unpaid Covid-era benefits, and farmers are still being gouged by middlemen. As always, the Freedom of Information bill remains parked in some legislative purgatory —precisely where those in power prefer it.

The real curse of the SoNA isn’t bad news — it’s its predictability: new slogans, same old choreography. The speech ends, the applause swells, the spin begins — and nothing moves unless it threatens the wrong person’s seat.