Lame duck in 2028

Leni Robredo’s announcement this week that she will not run for president in 2028 — that the door is “closed,” that “nothing can change that” — if final, means the candidate who could plausibly unify the anti-Duterte vote has taken herself out of the race.

But the problem persists for Marcos Jr. as he lacks a winnable candidate. And the reason for that is entirely of his own making — the trust deficit that poisons any endorsement.

A President’s endorsement is only as valuable as the public’s confidence in his judgment. By that measure, Marcos Jr.’s endorsement is worth almost nothing. His trust rating, which stood at 80 percent in 2023, had plummeted to 28 percent by July 2026, with 51 percent of Filipinos expressing their distrust of him.

Two major surveys placed his net satisfaction rating at -11 and -19 as of September 2026. This is not a President whose blessing confers credibility; it is a President whose embrace may well be the kiss of death.

The flood control scandal is undoubtedly the proximate cause of that collapse. An estimated P118 billion in economic losses resulted from ghost and substandard flood control projects between 2023 and 2025. The President himself exposed the scandal in his 2025 State of the Nation Address, then ordered investigations, created a commission and promised accountability.

Yet the economy has contracted for five consecutive quarters, with GDP growth slumping to 2.1 percent in the third quarter of 2026 — the lowest since 2009, outside the pandemic. Public construction has declined for six consecutive quarters. The scandal is not a footnote to this presidency. It is its defining economic fact.

Against this backdrop, the Supreme Court declared key provisions on Unprogrammed Appropriations in the 2024, 2025 and 2026 national budgets void and unconstitutional. The ruling was effectively a judicial rebuke of the fiscal architecture the President has relied upon — and a reminder that the mechanisms of patronage are not unlimited.

Yet the 2027 proposed budget reveals that the single largest district-level insertion in the House-approved General Appropriations Bill — a staggering P4.37 billion — was set aside for the 1st District of Ilocos Norte represented by House Majority Leader Sandro Marcos, the President’s son.

The Palace’s reaction? To throw delicadeza out the window, shrug off the critics and remain oblivious to the irony. After all, these insertions are necessary to feed Sandro’s political machine so it can outlast his father’s term.

The core of the administration’s dilemma: Marcos Jr. has said he will endorse a candidate who will continue his anti-corruption drive. But his anti-corruption drive is the very thing that has destroyed his credibility.

The flood control scandal, the budget insertions, the Supreme Court’s rebuke — these are not separate issues. They are the same issue: a presidency that has substituted the appearance of accountability for its substance, and that has concentrated the resources of the state in the hands of a narrow political family.

An endorsement from this President does not transfer legitimacy. It transfers baggage. Whoever Marcos anoints will inherit the flood control scandal, the budget controversies, the economic contraction and the trust deficit. They will inherit a government that has spent three years promising clean governance while presiding over the most brazen insertions in recent memory.

And they will face an opposition, in Sara (or Baste) Duterte or from a pro-Duterte faction that, even without Robredo, has a built-in advantage: the simple, devastating argument that the Marcos Jr. years were a failure.