President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. in mid-June summoned Congress to a special session under Proclamation 1318, directing lawmakers to convene and fast-track action on a list of social protection bills.

The list he gave read, at first glance, like responsible governance: scholarship programs, nutrition amendments, assistance for isolated schools. But measured against what Filipinos actually say keeps them up at night, the proclamation’s priorities look less like urgency and more like convenience.

Pulse Asia’s March 2026 survey found 59 percent of Filipinos naming inflation as their top concern, with corruption, poverty and joblessness trailing behind. Not one of the bills proposed in the special session’s list touches the machinery that drives prices upward. That gap between what the Palace calls urgent and what the public calls urgent is the real story here.

Take electricity. Filipino households and businesses pay some of the highest power rates in the region, and that cost bleeds into everything from manufacturing to market stalls to the price of rice.

An Electric Power Industry Reform Act overhaul aimed at breaking up generation bottlenecks and curbing transmission monopolies would do more for inflation than any nutrition subsidy. Yet it is nowhere on the special session’s agenda.

The administration would rather champion feeding programs than confront the entrenched interests that keep power expensive. That is not an oversight. It is a choice, and a telling one.

Corruption fares no better. The Anti-Political Dynasty bill, which the President, in the special session he called, asked lawmakers to act on with haste, is being sold by proponents in Congress as an accountability measure. But House Bill 8389 bans only second-degree relatives from holding office in the same jurisdiction simultaneously.

Political clans do not need blood relatives in adjacent seats when they can install allies, financiers and loyal proxies instead. A dynasty law this porous is not reform; it is theater designed to let Congress claim it acted while changing almost nothing about who actually gets to hold power.

If the government were serious about the graft and corruption that 47 percent of Filipinos cite as a top concern, it would confront bank deposit secrecy, one of the last real shields protecting corrupt officials and tax evaders from scrutiny.

Amending that law with proper safeguards would let the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the Anti-Money Laundering Council and anti-graft bodies actually trace the money instead of chasing paperwork. Every year this reform is stalled is another year the country’s investment climate absorbs the cost of opacity.

None of this is to dismiss the education and welfare bills on the special session’s list. The Classroom-Building Acceleration Program Act addresses a genuine long-term deficit in the country’s learning infrastructure, and nutrition support for poor children is not wasted spending.

But governance is about sequencing, and this administration has sequenced matters backward. It has reached for the bills that generate ribbon-cuttings and photo opportunities while sidestepping the ones that require confronting entrenched power, whether in the energy sector, the banking sector, or the political families that treat public office as an inheritance.

Filipinos did not rank inflation, corruption, jobs and poverty as their top concerns by accident.

These are the daily compounding burdens that shape whether a family eats well, whether a small business survives, and whether trust in institutions holds.

A legislative agenda that sidesteps all four while claiming urgency is not serving the public interest. It is managing appearances. The special session was Malacañang’s chance to prove otherwise. So far, it has not.