Some people are really upset about Malasakit Centers. They see Bong Go and their brains shut down. Because the centers work. They hate it. People get help. Seventeen million people. When people get help, they don’t have to depend anymore on politicians who ask, “How do we get the credit?”

Before Malasakit? Oh, wow-wow. It was a bureaucratic marathon run by sick people prescribing red tape for a bandage. Government hospitals lower the bill without removing the pain.

Now you walk in, get a medical bill and your head spins. You think: “Oh no, I have to beg a politician for a recommendation.”

Wrong. Malasakit gives you a dedicated desk. A social worker. She smiles. You panic. Except she goes: “We’ll take care of this.” For someone who has never been taken care of, ever, that lands like a miracle. It rearranges the inside of your chest. PhilHealth handled. MAIFIP, PCSO and DSWD all at once.

You step outside. The sun is brighter. The air cleaner. You feel like you just leveled up in life. Birds are chirping. Even the traffic seems to part politely, like the country suddenly realized that today it is bowing to efficiency in government.

Critics say Bong Go used Malasakit to get to the Senate. Funny because the only people actually using it are the patients. They accuse the man of creating “utang na loob.” By association.

You know what, maybe he did. If doing the right thing makes people notice you, if genuinely helping people actually makes Bong Go popular, I say congratulations to democracy. I say more power to him.

“He tells people to go to Malasakit Centers like it’s his money.”

It’s called giving people the solution: “Here’s how you survive the hospital system. One hundred sixty-seven centers nationwide. Use it. Live.” Patronage is when you beg a politician. Malasakit is when the politician tells you where to stop begging.

“He’s Mr. Malasakit, he’s promoting himself.”

You can mock the man. Call him The Shadow, Mr. Loyal, Mr. Epal, Mr. Everywhere Tatay Digong Goes, the tiny stiff figure behind the brute. “What kind of man dreams of power after years of standing behind it?”

But if a program gives dignity, someone has to stand up and champion it. You can’t have a revolution of care without someone carrying the banner, waving it even while others complain it’s waving too well.

Maybe if doing the right thing also makes someone’s numbers rise, maybe that’s a story of a small man in a big system doing enormous work.

The crime would have been to watch 17 million people suffer while the critics perfected their outrage. Do they have a problem with competence? Because it’s confusing. You don’t get to call a life-saving system immoral just because it didn’t flatter you.

How much of their outrage comes from seeing results they can’t reproduce? And how much is from the fact that, once people learn that government can work, the people will never accept excuses again?