A nation worth believing in
Constructive criticism, the kind that sharpens a policy, exposes a genuine failure, and holds power to account, is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy.
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Constructive criticism, the kind that sharpens a policy, exposes a genuine failure, and holds power to account, is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy.
Every year, the State of the Nation Address (SoNA) arrives as something more than a government report. It is a beacon of hope. For a few hours, the country pauses to hear where its leader believes we stand and where he intends to take us.
Yesterday’s SoNA was no exception.
President Marcos laid out a nation moving forward: a campaign against corruption that has produced charges against erring officials and contractors in the flood control mess, new energy reserves to secure our future, tens of thousands of teachers equipped and promoted, and a firm defense of our rights in the West Philippine Sea.
These are not empty promises. They are initiatives worth getting behind.
And yet, before the President had even finished, the familiar chorus began. The pessimists. The detractors. The people who greet every plan with a sneer and every goal with suspicion. They do not want the country to move forward. They would rather dampen hope than help build on it. Because a hopeful, united nation is inconvenient to those whose relevance depends on our discontent.
Let me be clear about what I am not saying. Criticism has its place. Constructive criticism, the kind that sharpens a policy, exposes a genuine failure, and holds power to account, is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy. I say this as someone who has spent a career in accountability work. Scrutiny matters, and it always will.
But there is a difference between the critic who wants the plan to succeed and the critic who needs it to fail.
When a people gather to hear their leader speak of plans and goals — whether clean governance, energy security, better schools, a defended homeland — the honest response is to meet it with hope and support, and then to hold him to every word. That is patriotism.
What we too often get instead is reflexive negativity from those who overly and consciously detract, not because the ideas are bad, but because someone else gets the credit.
Ask yourself who benefits from a discouraged nation. Not the farmer. Not the teacher. Not the family still waiting for the floodwaters to recede. The ones who benefit are those already calculating their next election, protecting a fading political brand, nursing a grudge. Their pessimism is not principle. It is selfishness wearing the costume of concern.
So why not be hopeful? Why not support what is good, and then fight to make it better?
The country does not move forward on cynicism. It moves forward on belief, and on the willingness of ordinary Filipinos to choose that belief, again and again, over the voices that profit from despair.
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