‘Tayo ito’

For the first time, it felt as though the President was speaking directly to the people.

Though he fumbled with a few Tagalog words, President Bongbong Marcos during Monday’s State of the Nation Address (SoNA) spoke in pure Filipino — formal, still, neither colloquial nor kanto. It was language we could all understand, language that spoke to our Filipino soul.

Apa Ongpin of the Makati Business Club made the same observation afterwards, adding that having the right “tone” is really important to be heard. “He’s found his voice,” Ongpin commented in a TV analysis streamed on various platforms.

He is “now able to deliver ideas in a very accessible way. He talks directly… none of the rhetoric,” echoed the other guest, De La Salle Professor Julio Teehankee, who added: “He finally gets it.”

By this, he meant that BBM talked about programs and decisions that resonated with many people — something they understood only too well. While viewer comments reeked with doubt and cynicism, the speech itself was listened to throughout.

And it was not about mere comprehension — the hour-long speech that did not overflow with numbers and percentages — but a feeling that our needs are finally being seen and heard.

Midway into his presidency, Bongbong Marcos seems to have backtracked, taking a back-to-basics approach that invariably addresses the people’s dismay over perennial issues.

“Yan tayo e,” literally translated to “that’s us,” when said in a certain tone loses the positive reinforcement in its meaning to become “here we go again” — a line often said to express resignation over something not quite satisfactory.

It had become a sad refrain for traits we Filipinos do not like about ourselves. When politicians are all about broken promises, “yan tayo e.” When bridges collapse and floods inundate cities, guess what? Yan tayo e, lagi na lang (always the same).

So this year’s SoNA, many times echoing solutions only dreamed of in the past yet never really accomplished, felt like a balm to wounds healed over and broken open many times.

More classrooms, higher pay, laptops for teachers, and wider internet connectivity. Free education, free hospitalization, and infrastructure projects that last. At times, the list read like fiction, yet one could be forgiven for the cynical view.

At some point, it became more about how and why he was enumerating promises — excavating a grudging admiration for the sheer risk he took to address corruption, the root of all failures that come back to us in the form of broken bridges and intense floods.

And it became not just a calling out of crooked leaders — for shame! — but a call to action to all Filipinos. It was like he was saying, “I see the problems, I have solutions. Help me, help us.”

“Flipping the narrative” is how analysts call it. And for all the speculations about Bongbong somehow wanting redemption for the family name, the big question still remains: Does he have what it takes to fight corruption?

Too much kapalpakan (failures) and kapabayaan (neglect) has led to this, a tipping point. And for the rest of his presidency, we can only hope to be able, as President Marcos Jr. urged us, to state with real pride: “Tayo ito (This is us).”