The surprise crowd at the EDSA People Power Monument grew the way floodwater rises — slowly, then all at once, providing a symbolic backdrop.

The scare it created was all too evident to Malacañang to miss. On Tuesday morning, as the crowd began to build, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was scheduled to speak before the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FoCAP).

The meeting was crucial because international media would be present, and it was just days ahead of the pivotal start of Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial.

Forum participants were initially told the President would be late, but later the Palace scrapped the address altogether, citing the developments at EDSA.

Behind the Palace gates, the apprehensive souls had vivid memories of 1986, the shape of the crisis old and familiar. The people who lived through the first revolt recognized it instantly — a leadership running out of road and a public that has run out of patience.

Amid the massive rally, the Ombudsman’s office made its own quiet announcement. It was pursuing its case against Senator Rodante Marcoleta — around whom the protest was ostensibly called.

Among the rally issues was the application of selective justice on members of the political opposition, using accountability as an excuse.

In contrast, administration allies and those persuaded to cast aside principle and jump ship are given due process, meaning their cases are held up until the government decides on them — for an indefinite period.

Those who signed off on the flood control insertions, who moved trillions of pesos through appropriations requiring the President’s signature to release, benefit from cases that move slowly enough to outlast the headlines.

When whistleblowers, like the “Brave 18” former Marines and other witnesses who came forward, are the ones investigated while the real crooks are left untouched, the system has stopped protecting the people and started protecting itself.

The honest are indicted while the guilty roam free and even legislate. While the leader disappears behind barbed wire and container vans.

At the precise hour the crowd was on EDSA, the President was delivering a departure address before flying to Canada.

It is one thing to travel during a crisis — heads of state do it, sometimes must do it — but it’s another thing entirely to be seen leaving at the exact moment your own capital is under siege from discontent.

Weak leadership manifests in other ways, such as the failure to keep prices and the cost of living within reach of the majority of Filipinos.

The Marcos administration has been compared to a cornered tiger, which is most dangerous when it has no way out.

An administration with its back to the wall — implicated in plunder, unable to explain a collapsed peso’s worth of flood control money, watching its own coalition partners calculate whether loyalty is still the safer bet — becomes more desperate, more willing to twist due process into a weapon or the notorious quip “bend the law.”

Now, Filipinos have a President who is more comfortable being elsewhere than at home.

This is encouraging more Filipinos to show up in large enough numbers to send jitters down the spines of those in power.

Those who still believe they can ride this out should remember the old warning: “Those who ride the tiger will likely end up inside it.”

The danger isn’t in getting on, it’s in not being able to get off.