Hope in this country is not lost, and for once the claim is not entirely fraudulent, it seems. There has been a flicker of movement in the long, exhausting campaign against corruption.

After years in which public resentment seemed to be reaching a boiling point, the period since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. delivered his “Mahiya naman kayo” speech during his last State of the Nation Address has produced something, though not nearly enough. What took place after that are meager, but they appeared like baby steps toward the old and still distant dream of a corruption-free Philippines, one in which politicians, presidential appointees, barangay officials, and even traffic enforcers are guided by the common good rather than by the geometry of their own pockets.

The news of the day is the arrest of the controversial flood control contractor Sarah Discaya, an arrest so carefully stage-managed that it barely qualifies as one, since she had thoughtfully surrendered herself well in advance of the warrant, sparing everyone the inconvenience of seeing what an actual arrest looks like. But this is supposed to count as progress. It would count for more if there were not so many others who by now should be occupying adjoining cells and explaining themselves in court.

The flood control scandal alone has swollen to astronomical proportions. It has spread too widely to be dismissed as incompetence. The brazenness of the looting across both the legislative and executive branches is astonishing, and beyond that, frankly revolting.

If corruption has truly infiltrated the hallowed corridors of Malacañang, then the logic is mercilessly simple: Marcos Jr. must answer for it. If not now, thanks to presidential immunity, then he should be charged and arrested the moment he steps down in 2028. He is, after all, the heir to a dictator who looted this country with relentless efficiency, a man whose family name has become synonymous with the systematic plunder of the public coffers.

If he has presided over the perpetuation of this rot, then there is no rationale, moral or legal, to shield him. He should face charges, and if justice has any meaning at all, he should be confined to a cell like any other official who has betrayed the public trust. Marcos Jr. was handed a rare and almost mythical chance at redemption, a chance that most mortals would settle for a fraction of, and yet he squandered it with astonishing aplomb. 

Meanwhile, Sara Duterte, the ambitious and too presumptuous vice president from Davao, has been charged with plunder by a civil society group in connection with the mysterious spending of P612.5 million in confidential funds during her time as vice president and education secretary in the early months of the Marcos Jr. administration. Confidential funds have become the most convenient fig leaf in Philippine politics, a way to launder daylight robbery through secrecy and call it governance.

Thanks to Sara’s prodigious appetite for confidential funds – which once made even big cities look like children’s piggy banks – she has inadvertently sparked fiscal restraint. We learn that half of the National Capital Region’s cities – Makati, Malabon, Pasig, Las Piñas, Mandaluyong, Navotas, Taguig, and Valenzuela – got rid of confidential expenses in 2024, cutting regional spending by 35%. The lesson is brutal: spectacular appearances of corruption, when exposed, can become its own antidote.

And to the credit of Sara and the Duterte Diehard Supporters (DDS), they have unintentionally performed a public service. They have helped bring to national consciousness just how massive government corruption has become either through facts or disinformation. Their real intention, of course, is not reform but factional warfare. The goal is to smear Marcos, weaken his grip on power, and fan the embers of public anger in the hope that people will rise up and drive the current occupant of Malacañang from office.

Sara’s fantasy resembles the weeks before EDSA 2, when People Power forced Joseph Estrada to abandon Malacanang and cross the Pasig River. But the difference is crucial. Almost 25 years ago, Estrada’s vice president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, could at the time, pass as unsullied. 

Arroyo looked a bit motherly, wore the costume of innocence – a sheep’s clothing – and was not hounded by corruption scandals until much later. In 2001, Arroyo was medyo mabango. Sara Duterte enjoys no such advantage. She has been very mabantot for some time now, stinking like a bloated, overweight dead rat since at least 2024, if not well before.

One must also not overlook the two presidents. The Estrada corruption was as brazen as his mansions, shameless, and inescapably obvious, a grotesque parody of his campaign slogan, “Erap para sa Mahirap.” Marcos Jr., by contrast, is accused of a far more personal failing – drug addiction – a vice that, if true, compounds the moral and political rot around him. Yet he manages, astonishingly, to keep any direct link to corruption at arm’s length and even casts himself as the one conducting investigations into the very decay he presides over.

What is the purpose of the DDS campaign if not to drive Marcos from office before his term ends? For what end, when Junior isn’t even going to be Sara’s opponent in 2028? Sara and her ilk still don’t get it – despite all his failures and weaknesses, she somehow makes Junior look like an altar boy by comparison.

Isn’t it just perfect? The anti-corruption crowd may be quietly, and entirely unintentionally, building a launchpad for some poor sap in 2028 – an anti-corruption advocate who probably does not even know he or she is supposed to be the candidate to beat. 

Meanwhile, the yet-unnamed presidentiable, untainted by any corruption scandal, sits back, munching popcorn well out of the DDS trolls’ radar, watching the original UniTeam running mates blow themselves up in slow motion – just like the rest of us. Pastilan. – Rappler.com