Articles by Marlen V. Ronquillo

Politics

Pro-democracy opposition a blessing to embattled govt

IF that recent anti-corruption rally had Jose Manuel “Chel” Diokno as the featured speaker in lieu of Rodante Marcoleta, that protest would have been positively viewed as the protest of a “big tent” coalition with across-the-board support in protesting the brazen acts of infrastructure corruption. But with Marcoleta as the keynote speaker representing mainstream politics, the expected happened: there was neither a big dive nor a sober analysis on that brazen corruption, from its lamentable start in 2016 to its peak in mid-2025. Plus, Marcoleta was incapable of drawing a credible scenario on what current efforts to hold those behind that corruption accountable would yield, both in terms of jailing the guilty and the restitution of stolen public money.What Marcoleta was expected to say at the protest was indeed the content of his rambling but fiery speech. Marcoleta went on a tear to blame the whole fiasco on his favorite target, former speaker Martin Romualdez, which is only partly true. Romualdez, indeed, was the big abettor in the mid-2022-to-mid-2025 corruption saga. He surrounded himself with lackeys who are the worst of the lot: lawmakers-cum-public works contractors led by the now-infamous Zaldy Co. It was Romualdez who made Co chairman of the House of Representatives’ appropriations committee, which was like designating a known arsonist as head of the fire department. But in naming Romualdez as the principal in the depressing corruption story, Marcoleta’s blame game obscured the role of the other odious, major actors, and conveniently missed the fact that 2016 was the year flood control corruption started and thrived.Restitution was also left unsaid.Did Marcoleta touch on the central role that Curlee and Sarah Discaya played in that impossible corruption saga? And the P207 billion worth of public works contracts the couple allegedly cornered from 2016 to mid-2025, including “ghost” and shoddily executed flood control projects? That is like asking, “Are you kidding?”A chart showed that the Discayas even made a killing and cornered infrastructure projects left and right during the Covid-19 pandemic years, while many sectors heavily suffered.In that rally, which coincided with the release of those much-lampooned “bombshell” from Co, who now wants to take down Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s government from a safe haven overseas and the call from the usual suspects for the resignation of the president, the split images from two opposition camps were all too obvious: the giddiness of the pro-Duterte groups and the mainstream opposition’s muted indifference to the whole affair. This is just an aside, but it’s worth asking: Was Co too delusional to believe that his crude video productions would trigger massive unrest, bring about the fall of the Marcos government, to be followed by the assumption of Sara Duterte as the new president? Of course, delusional and conspiratorial go hand in hand.The rally brought to light one of the biggest ironies of Philippine politics. The mainstream, anti-Marcos opposition’s refusal to participate in a protest that had the potential of cascading into a series of events that could bring down the Marcos government. Had the mainstream oppositionists joined, they and their allies from the universities, civil society, organized labor, peasant groups, and other mass organizations would have added fire and combustion, and momentum to the oust-Marcos call. But the mainstream oppositionists opted out, which, given their pro-liberal democracy orientation, was just as predictable.The Marcos government may or may not realize this. Having a mainstream opposition only sworn to the processes and institutions of a liberal democracy — including processes and institutions related to the change in governments — is a blessing to the Marcos government. Just imagine a scenario wherein the mainstream opposition is predisposed to enter into an alliance with power-hungry groups clearly dedicated to the extraconstitutional seizure of state power. This was, indeed, an opportunity presented to the mainstream opposition during the peak of the rally.One of the three Akbayan party-list representatives explicitly said the protests under the umbrella of the Tindig Pilipinas coalition had no oust-Marcos angle. The protesters want the jailing of those found guilty of corruption, the restitution of the ill-gotten money, reforming the bidding and awards system for infrastructure projects, and reforming the budget process to stop budgetary insertions and pork barrel funds. Find the crooks and jail them all. The end of the Marcos family’s grip on Philippine politics will have to end via the electoral process.Any change in government will come via the constitution-sanctioned processes. No waltzing and conniving with groups lusting for power and impatient with the hallowed practices of democracy. No instant coronation of Sara Duterte, the Duterte princeling and, to the power-hungry, the president-in-waiting.On the question of whether the Marcos government would survive, the answer is yes because there is a buffer that prevents the intemperate and dark urges of the power-hungry from breaking through it. We can note with supreme irony that those holding forth at the buffer are the mainstream oppositionists who have no love lost for Mr. Marcos, but nonetheless are manning those ramparts because power and naked ambitions are anathema to what they dearly stand for.