The nation owes a debt of gratitude to the police officers who stood their ground on Sunday. From Luneta to Liwasang Bonifacio, from the EDSA Shrine to the People Power Monument, the rallies unfolded in a largely peaceful and orderly manner because the law enforcers observed maximum tolerance.

Even when rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails rained down near Malacañang, the police — some beaten, some bloodied — held the line. Without them, the clashes at Ayala Bridge, Mendiola and Recto Avenue might have spiraled into chaos.

But gratitude for the police does not mean we should be blind to the questions raised by the violence. Palace spokesperson Claire Castro has been crying that the mayhem was planned.

Akbayan and other groups point to alleged pro-Duterte forces as the culprits, claiming they hijacked the 21 September protests for their own political ends.

Yet in truth, no one really knows who could have been behind those masked men. Anyone with money could have paid them, ordered them to chant pro-Duterte slogans, and, in so doing, lend credence to the narrative meant to discredit the movement.

Indeed, a former Comelec commissioner has openly warned of a darker possibility: that the government itself may have deployed the thugs, manufacturing mayhem as a pretext to tighten the reins of power by declaring martial law.

We should be reminded that strongmen have long justified authoritarian measures by pointing to disorder on the streets. Not that we are now ready to call the President a strongman. Far from it, as the opposite — weakness — may also bring about the same self-preservation tendencies from those surrounding him.

Still, the state must not underestimate the depth of the public anger. Revolutions, as the pages of history show, are rarely polite affairs. When the injustice is too much to bear, rage explodes in ways that no riot policemen or water cannons can contain.

That is why former Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio’s words hit with such force — he called the current corruption scandal “worse” than anything ever seen in our history, even compared to the plunder under Ferdinand Marcos Sr.

If this is true, then the Filipino people have every right to be furious.

The government cannot be allowed to hijack the message of the 21 September protests. The administration should not inflate the street violence to obscure the real violence — the grand theft of the nation’s coffers. The crimes lie in the padded budgets drafted by the executive branch, in the pork barrel insertions by lawmakers, in the billions pocketed by corrupt government officials, unscrupulous contractors, and their equally greedy handlers in the Department of Public Works and Highways.

Those are far worse acts of violence that have drowned communities, starved classrooms, and left hospitals bare. In other countries, in different times, such plunder toppled governments and lined up the deposed in front of firing squads or on the gallows.

This is why the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) cannot afford to falter. As ICI adviser, Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong himself admitted, the pressure is immense. The public will not accept a whitewash. The ICI must not become a convenient shield for the guilty. It must come up with names, faces and, ultimately, jail terms for those responsible. Anything less would be a betrayal.

The protests were more than a gathering. They were a warning to contractors and Cabinet secretaries, to senators and congressmen, to the still nameless bagmen who greased the system: the Filipino people will no longer tolerate business as usual. It was a warning to dynasties that the anger they stoked will one day consume them.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. now stands at a crossroads. One road demands that he right this grievous wrong, if he himself is not guilty. He must prove that accountability is not just a word in speeches but a reality under his watch.

The other road is the dark one his father and family once walked — a path of denial, repression and, ultimately, downfall.

The choice is Bongbong’s, as his elder sister, Imee, said. And the people, already in the streets, will not wait forever.