As the nation counts down to the fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on 27 July, the political noise on the national stage feels distant from the steep ridges of the Cordillera Region.

Views from three sectors are presented: The struggles of rural upland laborers, indigenous community members, and urban transport workers, who all demand that national policy address their daily economic survival and rights. Their shared narrative highlights how macro-level policies directly affect the lives of ordinary citizens in the mountains, calling for systemic reforms that prioritize the welfare of the people over corporate interests and greedy bureaucratic agendas.

Representing the upland agricultural and mining sectors, Rima Mangili from Itogon, Benguet, outlines the urgent legislative and administrative demands of indigenous communities, farmers, and small-scale miners.

Mangili stressed that the local population is demanding an immediate halt to large-scale, corporate-driven infrastructure and resource extraction projects within ancestral domains. Destructive projects like large-scale mining, mega-hydro dams, and commercial geothermal plants directly jeopardize the environment, water supply, and physical safety of the community. Alongside environmental protection, there is a pressing need for agricultural reform.

She said that rather than receiving temporary relief measures and promises that most of the times remain as promises, Cordillera peasants require an institutionalized subsidy program, a robust agricultural market system, and strict floor prices for highland crops to protect them from severe price drops, middleman exploitation, and cheap imports.

For the small-scale mining (SSM) sector to survive, Mangili said the government must drastically simplify the application requirements for declaring a Minahang Bayan. The current legal framework is far too expensive, tedious, and heavily biased toward large corporate entities, which effectively pushes traditional small-scale mining livelihoods into illegality.

Compounding structural challenges are deep-seated issues within the very government institutions tasked with protecting indigenous welfare. Melchor, a government employee who is also a member of an indigenous community in Mountain Province, expands on this critique by focusing on the legal and administrative failures that threaten ancestral lands. He demands an immediate stop to land grabbing and insists that the government prioritize the issuance of Certificate of Ancestral Domain Titles (CQDT) to secure the land rights of indigenous populations. Central to his call is the demand to strictly honor the principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), ensuring that communities have a genuine say in any development entering their territories.

In order for this to be achieved, Melchor asserts that the state must cleanse the bureaucratic system like that of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP). This agency, along with the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) must undergo a rigorous review to eliminate workflows that burden rather than protect indigenous peoples trying to manage their traditional resources.

As these demands for land and resource rights echo from the rural uplands, the economic strain extends directly into the urban centers of the region, affecting the working class in different ways. Moving from the fields and mines to the roads of the regional capital, public utility vehicle (PUV) driver Lewie Aquino navigates the steep streets of Baguio City while carrying the practical, ground-level expectations of the transport sector. For urban workers like him, the upcoming address serves as a critical indicator of how the national economy will impact daily take-home pay. He faces the immediate burdens of fluctuating fuel prices, the high cost of vehicle maintenance, and the ever-rising prices of basic groceries for his family.

Aquino expects the national leadership to lay out concrete plans to tame inflation, lower the cost of living, and offer tangible relief measures that can directly ease the financial strain on working-class Filipinos rather than focusing on abstract economic growth statistics.

Driving in a major urban hub also gives him a front-row seat to local infrastructure issues that require urgent national attention. He anticipates updates on infrastructure development, specifically regarding traffic management systems and road maintenance programs designed to alleviate the city's notorious choke points.

Given the ongoing push for public utility vehicle modernization (PUV), Aquino said the government should first address the future of local transport routes with fairness. He hopes for viable subsidies and support programs rather than aggressive mandates that could jeopardize his livelihood, emphasizing that a successful national plan must balance modernizing the country with protecting the ordinary drivers who keep its cities moving.

Coming from three distinct sectors, these different perspectives converge into a singular narrative: a region demanding that development be measured by the safety, rights, and economic security of its people, a call and at the same time a challenge they hope the national government and the President will not ignore.