THE annual State of the Nation Address (SONA) by the president is always one of the most carefully calibrated and stage-managed events in the political calendar, and there is a tendency among many observers to take what is said with a grain of salt. After all, the annual report to Congress is a mere bland constitutional requirement; but the tradition of doing it in the form of a one-man show to an audience dressed in their runway-worthy finest is specifically designed to allow the leader of the republic to shower his administration with self-praise.
That is what we got on Monday afternoon with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s. fifth SONA, but in spite of the expected positivity of his address, there was an undercurrent of caution to it. There were few grand, sweeping pronouncements and an overall message that the aspirations of the Marcos administration, and by inference the country as a whole, should be to “stay the course.”
Although that was certainly disappointing to some hoping to hear their own advocacies addressed, it was a realistic and practical approach on the part of the president, particularly as he has now reached what could be considered the end stage of his time in office. Much has been started in the past four years, and the Philippines’ historic lack of continuity from one administration being what it is, the focus should now turn to seeing things to completion. Marcos has 23 months remaining until the end of his watch, and because of the constraints of the election period in the run-up to the May 2028 polls, he really only has about 20 months to get things done.
And he is going to have to do that in an atmosphere of tension caused by troubling global economic conditions, aggravated by domestic political strife. To his credit, Marcos focused on what is most worrisome to Filipinos at the moment, beginning with the massive flood control corruption scandal that was the highlight of last year’s SONA. As recent opinion surveys have shown, despite the president’s candor in revealing the scandal last year and initiating a sweeping campaign to investigate and exact accountability for it, an overwhelming majority of Filipinos remain deeply skeptical of the government’s sincerity in pursuing the “big fish,” exacting justice, and putting strong safeguards in place to prevent the wholesale theft of public funds.
Addressing the issue at the beginning of his speech, and more importantly, acknowledging that his own cousin — former House speaker Martin Romualdez, who Marcos did not identify by name — must and will be made to answer for his apparent central role in the scandal, may have helped to reassure the public. Candidly admitting that it pained him personally that one of his own family was involved, but that he had no choice but to do his duty to the country come what may was a master stroke. Whether it was effective or not remains to be seen, but much of that depends on whether the responsible authorities follow through quickly on the filing of the appropriate charges.
In other respects, Marcos for the most part focused on immediate concerns of the people, such as high energy costs, rising costs of living, and financial and health care support for disadvantaged citizens. Here is where two of the three truly new directives introduced in the speech were shared; the first was the request to Congress to proceed forthwith on the work necessary to remove the system loss charge and corresponding value-added tax from consumer electric bills — which received the loudest and longest applause of the afternoon — and the second was the proposal to raise the income tax-exempt threshold from its current P250,000 per year to P350,000, along with removing the minimum corporate tax levy on small businesses.
Although they are relatively minor initiatives in the grand scheme of things, both of these will require a great deal of study and careful legislative design in order to be effective, and there will undoubtedly be much analysis on them presenting for public debate in the coming days and weeks. However, in the context of the SONA, merely mentioning them as desired objectives was enough, for now; it demonstrated that the government is indeed aware of citizens’ day-to-day concerns, and means to do something to address them.
Of course, words are one thing and actions quite another, so it remains to be seen whether the administration and Congress can work together to productively achieve these things. But what the president presented in his SONA did not give the impression that his government’s reach is exceeding its grasp, and while that might be less than what some hoped for, we can be cautiously optimistic for progress in the coming months.
