If we could replay the past New Year’s Days of our lives as Filipinos, we might just learn that we, in fact, never learned a thing. So much happened in 2025 — a harsh year where the blinders were forcibly removed from our eyes, and the hidden rot was exposed for all to see.

We saw how corruption had grown to such an extent that the line “moderate your greed” would be rendered laughable. Those years when Filipinos were raging against the ZTE-NBN deal now seem mild compared to the last few months when incredible revelations were made by Department of Public Works and Highways engineers and the contractors in cahoots with them to meet the demands of slimy politicians.

Back in 2008, the term became infamous when witness Rodolfo Lozada Jr. narrated how former Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Romulo Neri had asked him to tell the commission-hungry politicos to “moderate your greed.”

Back then, there was concern not so much about this troubling practice, but the size of the kickbacks being demanded. Clearly, that SOP has not been checked, let alone did it wane. It has only increased in magnitude.

What’s different now, perhaps, is that people, learning of the “percent percent” going into cash-filled luggage, are no longer shocked into silence, eager to disbelieve it because it would mean they had been betrayed. Again.

No, people took to social media, took to the streets, and took their self-realization to demand real justice.

Filipinos who go through the tough realities of life in the Philippines have always felt they were being shortchanged by the leaders they had elected to office. They see it in the unkempt neighborhoods, in the daily difficulties of commuting, in the helplessness one feels in the face of calamities. There is always a sense of “kulang,” or a lack of something, especially when we compare our country with our regional neighbors.

Filipinos, being Filipinos, would love to leave this issue behind. But we doubt they will forget this one easily, even when the next big issue comes along. 

This New Year, the usual wishes for peace and prosperity that flooded our screens somehow rang hollow, mere lip service, just like those we had been fed over and over again by silver-tongued politicians for decades now. We are at the cusp once more, on the brink of something, but whether we step towards more decay or to real change will be up to each of us.

To begin with, we ended 2025 with promises not kept. The real culprits in the flood control project mess that President Bongbong Marcos promised would spend Christmas in jail are still out there. Does justice take a holiday? Our leaders must think hard about their next course of action if they are to keep the Philippines afloat amid the Filipino people’s flood of disappointment.

Inertia may trap us in another round of this zarzuela.