Marcos is no bystander

Dear Editor,

Your 22 November 2025 editorial titled “Is the Philippines irreparably damaged?” treated President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. with the softness of a hotel pillow: fluffed, perfumed and carefully pressed so as not to wrinkle the sensitivities of the Palace.

You listed presidents past, namely, Ramos the reformer, Arroyo the technocrat, Aquino the “straight path” manager and Duterte the bulldozer.

And yet when it came to Marcos, the critique landed with all the force of a damp cotton ball. Let’s be honest. Of all the presidents you mentioned, Marcos is the one destined to be remembered in the footnotes of ignominy.

Not because of his stagnant charisma or policy acrobatics, but because he signed, willingly and proudly, what may go down as the most corrupt national budget in Philippine history.

The stench of the 2025 General Appropriations Act, with its ghost flood control projects and phantom contractors, is now lapping right at the doorstep of Malacañang. You can practically see the sludge forming a neat little moat around Marcos’s spit-shined shoes.

Then there was the quiet, tender moment when Marcos handed Duterte over to the International Criminal Court on a silver platter. A gesture so delicate it could have been performed to violin music.

Call it statesmanship, call it cowardice. Whatever the label, it was an act of political transaction, not principle. He sold out the very man whose political capital delivered him to the Palace in the first place.

Contrast that with the one president on your list who actually demonstrated political will: Rodrigo Roa Duterte. Whatever one’s personal feelings about the man, it’s undeniable that he governed with a clarity of conviction that the others lacked.

During the Covid years — those dark, disorienting nights when the world held its breath — any other president would have presided over catastrophe. Certainly Aquino, with his trademark teka-teka hesitation, who would still have been calling for a meeting to schedule another meeting as infections multiplied.

Your editorial attempted to distribute blame evenly, as though history were some communal potluck of failure. It isn’t. The damage to the country is not abstract; it has an address, it has a name and it occupies the most powerful office in the land while pleading innocence with a straight face.

If we must ask whether the Philippines is “irreparably damaged,” then let’s not tiptoe around the truth: damage becomes permanent only when we pretend the culprit is invisible. Marcos is not a bystander in this tragedy. He is its most enthusiastic co-author.

Sincerely,

Steven Ponciano

steveponce75@gmail.com