Credibility deficit

Yet beyond the headlines and applause lines, the more pressing question is whether the speech will devote equal attention to accountability.

As the administration enters the final half of its term, the public may be looking less for fresh sound bites than for concrete evidence that commitments are being matched by decisive action.

The problem for President Marcos is that the audience has become harder to convince.

More than inflation, the debt pile and the political feud that is pulling down the economy, the President must wrestle with a worsening credibility problem.

Administrations survive recessions, natural disasters and political storms but not the widening gap between promises and lived reality.

Five years into the administration, the next SoNA will likely be judged by what failed to materialize.

For instance, the promised P20-per-kilo rice became a limited program designed mainly for optics instead of the affordable staple that ordinary consumers expected based on what PBBM promised at the start of his term.

Budget reforms continue to elude the fiscal system, which remains hostage to the pork barrel racket.

Every unmet commitment chips away at public trust far more effectively than any opposition attack could, and the administration has found itself fighting too many political battles.

The impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte has consumed public attention and competes with urgent economic concerns that hit households hard.

Political noise, thus, has become an economic variable in itself as investors retreat in the absence of predictability.

Markets reward stability, but businesses postpone expansion plans when strife dominates the headlines.

Governments often dismiss political instability as a media exaggeration, but serious investors know it when they see it.

Addressing the effects of stronger typhoons through anti-flood projects and programs, for instance, stalled because of the corruption scandal, which is being rechanneled as ammunition against foes.

The issue has evolved beyond infrastructure and has become a metaphor for governance. Every flooded community asks the same uncomfortable question: Where did the money go?

When it rains, every submerged highway washes away another layer of public confidence.

The administration has attempted damage control through investigations and declarations that corruption will not be tolerated, but investigations have become like floodwaters: Predictable and receding without fundamentally changing anything.

Filipinos have heard promises to prosecute corrupt officials from nearly every administration, but what is remembered is not the promise but who actually went to jail.

The government’s response to problems invariably is to dump money on the populace, which only reveals a deeper political problem.

Ayuda may relieve immediate hardship, but it rarely restores dignity when citizens believe they are merely receiving a fraction of what corruption took away from them.

Institutions that should allow people to earn decent incomes without having to depend on government generosity have not functioned, as they suffer from the chilling effect of many officials failing to roll out projects.

Yet the economy is relying on government spending to counteract the slump as prices continue to rise.

Where is the accountability, a continuing demand from Filipinos that is impossible to ignore?

If the President truly believes that corruption is the obstacle to the country’s development, then the response cannot end with a speech admonishing officials to be ashamed of themselves.

It requires criminal cases leading to the conviction of those behind the massive theft of government funds that came from the pockets of toiling Filipinos.

The easiest part of governance has always been delivering a SoNA, but President Marcos has a duty to explain why last year’s promises were unmet.