Lenten penance in this powerless nation

As the Philippines enters the solemnity of Holy Week 2026, the traditional silence of the season is being drowned out by the noise of the jeepney transport strikes and the screech of political warfare. We are a nation undergoing a collective penance, but this one isn’t of our choosing.

Between a crippling National Energy Emergency and the historic impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, the Filipino people are caught in a crossfire of systemic failure and political vendetta.

The red alert status has become our new Lenten liturgy. In the past days, our nation’s supply has hit a breaking point. With prices spiraling out of control, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has been forced to declare a “state of national energy emergency.” With the peso languishing at a historic ₱P60.21 to the dollar, our ability to import fuel has been hamstrung, leaving the Department of Energy to manage a scarcity that feels more like a permanent decline than a temporary glitch.

This Holy Week, anxiety has replaced the spiritual reflection for Catholic Filipinos and the rest of the nation. There is a growing, grim realization that the “energy emergency” is just the first of a series of falling dominoes that could end in an economic catastrophe. While the country’s elite retreat to luxurious vacations and posh villas, the rest of the population is left to contend with the scourge of the energy crisis.

We are once again being lectured on the virtues of sacrifice. The public is told to “conserve,” to “endure,” and above all, to remain “resilient.” But this year, this narrative has already turned sour. What was once a tribute to the Filipino spirit has been weaponized by a political class that uses our ability to suffer as a shield for their own ineptitude.

The burden of “resilience” always seems to fall exclusively on the shoulders of consumers.

We are the ones expected to navigate the dark, to pay the inflated bills and to “adjust” to a collapsing economy. Meanwhile, the structural reforms necessary to fix our energy sector remain perpetually stuck in the slow lane, stalled by the very people who praise our “strength” from their air-conditioned offices.

This is the exploitation of the Filipino’s endurance. By framing our survival as a moral victory, politicians effectively gaslight the nation into accepting systemic failure as a personal challenge. They sell us “resilience” so they don’t have to sell us solutions. It is a convenient distraction for the Filipinos who are busy showing their courage amid the brownouts and a plunging peso while their national leaders are freed from the weakness of having to actually govern.

While the Catholic faithful reflect on religious sacrifice this Holy Week, the House of Representatives is fixated on a sacrifice of a different nature. The impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sara Duterte, whose supporters has recently sought the help of the Supreme Court, has officially devolved from political theater into a full-blown constitutional crisis. The timing is not just unfortunate — it is cynical.

There is a profound, bitter irony in the national discourse. The corridors of power buzz with the rhetoric of accountability and rule of law regarding the Vice President’s impeachment, but the silence is deafening when it comes to the systemic failures of our energy sector.

We are not saying that we should let go of the Vice President’s impeachment since we need to find the truth to the allegations of her wrongdoings. But if we are hard on her, why can’t we demand the same for our government that seems to have forgotten the real meaning of public interest?

Why is there no reckoning for the decades of neglect that stalled our transition to renewables, leaving us vulnerable to every geopolitical tension in the Middle East? Moreover, why does the ill-advised enactment of Republic Act 8479 — the law that abdicates state control over fuel pricing — remain immune from scrutiny? The rule of law should not just target political rivals; it should also address the legislative blunders that have left the nation in the dark.