President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has lost the narrative on the corruption scandal and must step up before the nation to explain his side in the corruption wildfire, at least to regain his footing.

Political pundits expressed the crying need for the President to face Filipinos in a nationwide live address, as they indicated that going on with business as usual won’t work anymore.

Critics have cited a situation in which, after the controversy broke, the President left the country.

“What’s going on? He became inaccessible to the media. He couldn’t be reached. So the only ones speaking were the undersecretaries, including his spokesperson Claire Castro.”

“In a severe crisis, you don’t delegate communication. The leader himself has to come out because everyone is already affected,” a political analyst said.

Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Partylist Rep. Antonio Tinio said the President has dropped the ball since most of the events that are transpiring are not in the President’s storyline.

Give Castro a rest

At the Malacañang press conference, for instance, reporters were asking for an explanation on the so-called resignation of Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin. At some point, Palace Press Officer Castro suggested, “Let’s leave it at that,” which means they didn’t want to answer.

“That’s why I’m now using the term — we’re seeing a cover-up here and stonewalling,” Tinio said.

Despite earlier pronouncements that the investigations will follow wherever the evidence leads — which is now pointing at the President — the Palace is resorting to stonewalling and “let’s leave it at that” rather than actual transparency and straightforward answers from the President.

The question at the top of people’s minds is whether those most responsible for the budget, the leaders of the Senate, the House, the Committee on Appropriations, the Committee on Finance, and ultimately the President, the DBM, and so on, will be held accountable.

“And now it includes the President. So is the President’s reputation still salvageable? It depends. He has to address these direct allegations against him now,” according to Tinio.

“We have a 30 November rally coming up, but right now the President is acting as though it’s business as usual,” he said.

He added, “President Marcos just fired his executive secretary and his budget secretary, yet he’s acting as though everything is still going according to plan and that he will wrap up his anti-corruption campaign tied up in a neat bow by December.”

Come out in force

Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Cebu, Alberto Uy, has issued a rare and forceful public appeal urging all “peace-loving and God-fearing Cebuanos” to join a large-scale, prayerful anti-corruption gathering on 30 November, calling graft a “moral disease” and a “grave sin against God and neighbor.”

In a letter dated 22 November, the archbishop said Cebu’s “hearts are wounded” by the country’s “continuing shameful, immoral, and destructive practice of graft and corruption,” emphasizing that the issue is not merely a political but “a spiritual crisis.”

The event, organized with the Cebu Anti-Corruption Coalition, is dubbed SuPaKK (Sugboanong Pakigbisog Kontra Korupsyon) and will begin with a 2:30 p.m. mass at the Pilgrim Center of the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño de Cebu. The mass, according to the archbishop, will be offered “for the purification of our nation and the conversion of all who have been involved in corruption.”

Non-Catholic groups, he said, will gather simultaneously at Plaza Independencia.

A peaceful march will follow at 3:45 p.m., proceeding from the Pilgrim Center to Fuente Osmeña Circle “as a symbolic act of solidarity, humility, and hope.” By 4:45 p.m., a short program of prayers, testimonies, and public messages will take place at the Fuente Rotunda.

The archbishop stressed the gathering’s non-political nature, clarifying that it seeks neither to divide nor provoke. Instead, he described it as a “moral voice” declaring “enough with corruption, deception, and systems that hurt the poor and betray the common good.”

He urged parish communities, religious organizations, renewal movements, youth groups, schools, civic groups, public officials, and families to participate, saying Cebu must show its children what it means to live out the Christian values it professes.

“Evil triumphs when good people remain silent,” he wrote, warning that corruption grows “when honest citizens lose courage.” He said societal healing becomes possible only when people rise “not in violence, but in prayer… not in hatred, but in moral conviction.”

The archbishop ended the letter with a call for unity: “Let us walk for integrity. Let us walk for our children. Let us walk for our nation.”

The SuPaKK gathering is expected to draw large crowds amid the rising public frustration over corruption and a renewed push from civil and religious groups for accountability in government.