THE Zamboanga siege, the Bohol earthquake, Super Typhoon Haiyan, and the Mamasapano massacre. Then the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, the flood-control corruption scandal, surging inflation, crumbling growth, the falling peso, and Super El Niño.
If God is punishing our wayward leaders, those crises under Benigno Aquino III, Rodrigo Duterte and Ferdinand Marcos Jr. could very well be heaven’s chastisements for the sins of our nation’s fathers.
In late 2013, six months after Aquino used the pork barrel to circumvent lawmakers’ consciences — God’s voice in their hearts — in getting the Reproductive Health (RH) bill passed, his regime suffered pork-barrel protests in July, the Disbursement Acceleration Program controversy in August, and the Zamboanga City siege by Muslim leader Nur Misuari in September.
Then came the October 2013 earthquake in Bohol, Haiyan — called Yolanda in the country — the next month, and the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in December voiding pork barrel, the budgetary scheme used to silence God’s moral voice. And 10 days after Aquino falsely maligned bishops before Pope Francis’ visit in January 2015, the massacre of police commandos in Mamasapano triggered his worst crisis.
Eventually, Aquino’s chosen successor lost heavily to then-Davao City mayor Duterte, who sadly had his own grave transgression as president: the murderous anti-drug war. Under Duterte, the Covid-19 contagion crushed the economy and ballooned the budget deficit, setting back development and fiscal gains for years.
As for Marcos, his administration’s grave sin is depriving the poor of tens of billions of pesos in public funds for their development and protection, including flood-control outlays for endangered communities. Congress cut education, healthcare and livelihood programs, along with defense spending, to boost infrastructure and dole-out programs seen as electioneering outlays.
Plus, politicians and officials of the Marcos administration perpetrated the country’s worst corruption ever, leading to substandard or nonexistent flood-control projects that endanger the lives and livelihoods of poor communities in inundation-prone areas.
Now, we have soaring inflation from war-induced trade constriction in petroleum, fertilizer and food, growth and investment slumps due to the infrastructure graft scandal, record lows for the peso, and rising interest rates set to further dampen business.
Plus, the Supreme Court’s recent decision to declare unconstitutional the bloated unprogrammed appropriations in the 2024, 2025 and 2026 national budgets — trebled from past administrations and used to boost outlays for allied lawmakers.
No wonder the net approval and trust ratings for Marcos have turned negative while the ally he turned against, Vice President Sara Duterte, keeps topping surveys despite endless attacks by pro-Marcos politicians and media.
Marcos’ schemes to block her path to Malacañang — anti-Sara political and media efforts since 2023, failed Charter change in 2024, and impeachments in 2025 and 2026 — have yet to succeed. In her Senate impeachment trial, defense lawyers rate far higher in opinion polls than prosecutors, showing the public largely unswayed by her accusers.
And if Marcos machinations in the Senate leads to Vice President Duterte’s conviction, barring her from public office, her younger brother Sebastian also scores at or near the top in voter surveys. And the leading Duterte rival is former vice president and Marcos’ election opponent Leni Robredo.
As Filipinos say in the face of grave sin, translated from Tagalog: “God is not asleep.”
Worship, obedience and mercy
This brings to mind the Nov. 1 Mass readings for the Solemnity of All Saints, extolling the sanctity, sacrifices and glories of holy women and men.
So, what do to the Bible verses on holiness, most especially the Eight Beatitudes preached by our Lord in the Gospel passage from Saint Matthew (Mt 5:1–12), got to do with chastisement for the transgressions of our leaders? Plenty.
The opening verses from Revelation, the prophetic last book of the Bible (Rev 7:2–4, 9–14), tell of “the four angels who were given power to damage the land and the sea,” with the saints spared from coming chastisements after their own sufferings in the world ruled by unbelievers.
Similarly, the Responsorial Psalm (Ps 24:1–6) praises “One whose hands are sinless, whose heart is clean, who desires not what is vain” — not the rulers of our world who, well, are sinful, dark-hearted and seeking vain things. Nor are these potentates “the people that longs to see your face.” Rather, they probably hide from God’s gaze.
Or never knew Him, as the second reading from the First Letter of Saint John declares (1 Jn 3:1–3): “The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”
And what exactly did transgressors who lord it over humanity miss about the Lord? The Beatitudes, for starters: being poor in spirit and mournful of our world’s ills and pains, meekness in the face of arrogance, hunger and thirst for righteousness, mercy and purity of intentions, peacemaking and sacrifice for the good.
Sure, worshippers of power and wealth may espouse what’s right and just, but often to advance their self-serving agenda, lambasting the failings of rivals, but not allies and subjects under their rule.
And that’s not just here in our country, but more so across the world. Imperial powers justify dominance to propagate what they deem to be righteous ways and institutions and to crush opponents of their ideologies.
And where is God in the vocabulary and tenets of dominant powers? Nowhere significant, except, perhaps, to justify acts of domination and aggression, as Pope Leo XIV decried in official statements from the United States on the US-Israel war on Iran.
Thus, in superpower after superpower since the last century missing are the worship and obedience toward the Almighty and mercy toward the least of His children — the very core of sanctity. Rather, imperial vision, ambition and might are idolized and served with the sufferings of the powerless ignored unless they serve imperial goals.
Without faith in God, hope and trust in obeying His will, and compassion for the weak, Western colonialism and Soviet communism ended. Now, American dominance hits its limits as nations brace for the crisis it spawned.
But wait: Will new godless powers arise? For sure, if the devil has his way.