SoNA suppositions

There is the State of the Nation Address (SoNA) delivered each year by the President, and then there is the state of our senses. As in past SoNAs, the former will be read from a teleprompter come the 28th of July, complete with applause, pageantry, and the fiction or illusion of power.

The latter? For that, we must grope through ourselves — like the blind men and the elephant, except this time the elephant is probably stomping on our collective heads.

This will be Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s fourth SoNA. That’s one more than most would have expected, and still not quite enough to answer the questions that matter.

Each speech promises clarity but delivers cadence. Each year, the words pile up, but the meaning thins. We are told we are moving forward, but we keep circling the same potholes — only now they’re paved over with bullet points and branding.

He said in his first SoNA that the economy was sound; never mind that prices were not. That agriculture would rise; never mind that rice imports did too. That he would not talk about the past; never mind that the past keeps barging into the present with jackboots.

In his second, he pitched digital transformation: broadband for all, cloud services, e-governance. Never mind that most people still queue in government offices as if they were lining up for bread in wartime. But then again, maybe they are.

In the third, he grew bolder, borrowing from grand plans of old. With Maharlika and megaprojects, he promised the Philippines would rise from being the sick man of Asia to some vague, vaporous thing called “upper middle-income.” He said the country was moving forward; never mind that nobody quite knew where to. And now, the fourth address.

Each year, the answers come in metrics. GDP growth, inflation easing, jobs created. Each year, the questions return in flesh and bone. Food prices are up. Jeepney drivers are still at war with their own extinction. Students read under flickering bulbs — or not at all. There are more roads, — but to where?

He will say the economy is growing. And maybe it is, on a chart, in a spreadsheet. But it is not growing in the pocket of the tricycle driver who can barely keep his rig running. It is not growing in the gut of the grandmother who now buys rice by the cup.

Mr. Marcos stands on the rostrum at a strange hour in history. His Vice President, Sara Duterte, once his co-keeper of “unity,” faces an impeachment trial — undone not by opposition but by her own unraveling.

Rodrigo Duterte, Sara’s father, he of alleged death squads and midnight curses, now finds himself jailed in The Hague, facing charges of crimes against humanity. No scriptwriter in Malacañang could have penned that arc.

They say history has a way of settling scores, but it also scrambles them. One day’s hero becomes tomorrow’s defendant. One day’s strongman’s son becomes today’s... democrat?

This is not judgment; this is a devil’s advocacy. Suppose Marcos Jr. meant what he said, suppose the jailing of Duterte was justice, and suppose the impeachment meant accountability.

Then ask: if this is the best version of that future — what does it say of our past? The story will be told. The applause will rise. But if the nation still knows itself, it will ask the only question that matters: What, truly, have we become?