First word
IN his fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA), President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. did not grapple with the nation’s crisis of governance with sufficient seriousness and urgency. As a result, he frittered away the SONA’s proven potential as a platform for national reform and renewal. He came away from the address without a plan to bring closure to the multiple crises and scandals eating away at the nation’s vitals, no program for the whole of government to execute and follow, and no vision of the nation we aspire to become by the close of his presidency in June 2028.
It would not be sad and maddening if President Marcos were undertaking a status report or national checkup on the national condition for the first time, or if he had just been handed the authority of leading and governing our nation of 120 million people. In those earlier circumstances, it may have been permissible to plead unfamiliarity with the problems and lack of time for meeting the challenge of national governance.
But President Marcos has now been our president for almost five years. He has launched up front for execution his personal vision and program of government; he has made the key appointments to the Cabinet and the bureaucracy, and he has led the way in writing our foreign and domestic policies.
In short, we are the nation we are today chiefly because of five years of the Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s leadership and administration.
In a situation heavy with irony and paradox, President Marcos clearly would not want his presidency to be mainly remembered for the massive corruption, plunder and malversation of public funds for flood control and infrastructure development that happened during his watch; he would not want the nation to forget that it was he who exposed the plunder and corruption in the multi-billion flood control program of the government through his fourth SONA, or “mahiya naman kayo” address, in July 2025. It was then that the ugly and shameless story of how unscrupulous legislators (senators and congressmen alike), bureaucrats and contractors combined to loot without restraint public funds allocated for flood control and infrastructure development.
It is the second Marcos government, which will enter the historical record as the host and watch over the budget and the gate when public officials ostensibly enjoying the public’s trust looted at will the national treasury.
So deep and wide was the wound and stench in the government that the president’s sacrifice of his cousin and former House speaker Martin Romualdez to the public clamor for accountability did not seem to mollify anyone. Marcos’ bold declaration that he is not the president of his family and friends did not move the needle of public opinion. The process of repair, retribution and recovery cannot be skirted or cheated. Heads must roll, and the cleaning of the stable must begin at once.
Righting the situation could have begun with SONA 5, but the president elected to travel light and with as little baggage as possible.
By tradition and in practice, the openings of the sessions of congresses and parliaments are jealously guarded as occasions of great or high importance in the political calendar. Presidents and statesmen frequently use them as opportunities to launch new initiatives, policies and programs in order to get the full support of the people and their confidence in the government.
SOTU or SONA
In the United States, Americans call the president’s annual address to Congress the state of the union address, or SOTU for short.
Two of the greatest political speeches in US history came in the form of annual messages to Congress.
I take the trouble to cite them here because they underscore the opportunity missed by President Marcos to turn around the corruption and governance crises through a strong address aimed at the consecration of national energies to the renewal and recovery of values and the pursuit of ambitious goals and purposes by the nation.
As examples of speeches, I will use here Abraham Lincoln’s “We Cannot Escape History” before a joint session of the US Congress on Dec. 1, 1862, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s ‘Four Freedoms’ address to a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 1941.
Both speeches helped decisively to end raging conflicts at the time.
Lincoln’s bold proposal for compensated emancipation helped to end the conflict between North and South in the US Civil War.
Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech strongly urged Americans to end their opposition to US support for Allied troops in Europe. In a few years, World War II came to an end.
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