When an Unjust Order Persists, Uprising Becomes a Historical Necessity
The present situation once again presses upon the people an inescapable conclusion: when crisis is made permanent and oppression normalized, resistance ceases to be a choice and becomes a duty. History teaches that no unjust order collapses of its own accord. It is only when the people refuse to endure further exploitation that change becomes inevitable.
Recent events have merely confirmed what the masses have long felt and endured. The people have grown weary—of corruption without punishment, of governance reduced to vassalage, of a ruling elite that enriches itself while condemning the majority to deprivation, insecurity, and fear. From the countryside to the urban poor communities, suffering has accumulated not as an accident or misfortune, but as the direct outcome of an exploitative social order sustained through plunder, deception, and repression.
No amount of propaganda from the present administration and its apologists can conceal this reality. Their rhetoric of “unity,” “reform,” and “accountability” rings hollow in the face of entrenched corruption, the unleashing of state terror, and an unmistakable posture of subservience to both local oligarchs and foreign interests. As in regimes past, the present ruling clique governs not to serve the people, but to defend its own power and privilege—even if this requires the most naked and concentrated forms of oppression against the Filipino masses.
Under this order, corruption is neither incidental nor exceptional. It is systemic. It permeates infrastructure projects, public procurement, social services, and the machinery of governance itself. The exposure of scandals and the resignation of officials are paraded as proof of accountability, yet these gestures rarely lead to the prosecution of the principal architects of plunder. Instead, responsibility is deflected onto expendable figures, while the true beneficiaries of corruption—political dynasties, corporate partners, and their foreign backers—remain insulated from consequence.
If the ruling order were truly serious about addressing corruption, why have resignations within bodies such as the so-called “Independent Commission for Infrastructure” failed to result in the imprisonment of major plunderers, save for token figures like Discaya? Why are notorious political dynasts and entrenched power brokers shielded from investigation and prosecution? Why is public outrage selectively redirected toward convenient targets, while glaring cases—such as the misuse of public funds by officials at the highest levels of government—remain untouched or deliberately stalled? This selective justice only confirms what the people already know: corruption is not an aberration of the system; it is one of its pillars.
Beyond corruption and waste, the regime has failed—deliberately and systematically—to address the fundamental problems confronting the nation. Landlessness, unemployment, low wages, declining local production, and rising prices persist not because solutions are unavailable, but because genuine reforms threaten entrenched interests. Instead of structural change, the people are offered half-hearted reforms, empty commissions, and palliative measures designed to placate discontent while leaving the roots of exploitation intact.
In the face of worsening conditions, it is therefore no surprise that calls for mass action have intensified. Demands for transparency and accountability increasingly converge with calls for fundamental political change and outright ouster. These calls do not arise from manipulation or irresponsibility, as the establishment claims, but from lived experience—from hunger, joblessness, dispossession, and the daily indignities imposed by an unjust system.
Attempts by the ruling elite and its hired spoilers to dilute, derail, or “moderate” these demands are bound to fail. History shows that when the masses awaken to the systemic nature of their oppression, no amount of propaganda, intimidation, or token reform can extinguish their resolve. The more the ruling order resorts to repression and deception, the more it exposes its own illegitimacy.
What confronts the country today is not merely a crisis of governance, but a crisis of an entire social order that has exhausted its moral and political justification. An order that cannot deliver justice, dignity, or a decent life to the majority forfeits its claim to rule. In such conditions, resistance is not only justified—it becomes a historical necessity.
The question is no longer whether the people will move, but how long the unjust order can persist before it is swept aside by the collective force of those it has long oppressed.
Landlessness and the Hidden Exploitation of the Countryside
Landlessness remains a burning and unresolved issue in the countryside. Millions of peasants have been dispossessed of their livelihoods through rampant land grabbing, forced evictions, and the conversion of vast tracts of agricultural land into real estate developments, mining concessions, plantations, and so-called “development projects,” including renewable energy ventures that displace rather than uplift rural communities. Stripped of land and means of production, peasants are driven into seasonal farm labor, informal survival work, or forced migration to town centers and cities, swelling the ranks of the unemployed and underemployed.
The peasant masses remain concentrated in the countryside. They constitute the majority of the country’s productive classes, yet their true numbers are deliberately obscured in the official statistics of the reactionary state. In order to justify the systematic neglect of rural areas and to create the illusion that the economy has ceased to be agrarian, government data exclude large sections of the productive population—most notably peasant women and children who actively participate in agricultural production and related labor.
The vast majority of peasants do not own land, or possess only small and insufficient parcels to till. Many are tenants or sharecroppers, while millions more work as landless farmworkers. They are subjected to increasingly harsh forms of feudal and semifeudal exploitation and oppression—most acutely through onerous land rent, exploitative tenancy arrangements, and extremely low wages.
Peasant labor is backbreaking and relentless, yet they shoulder the highest costs and reap the least rewards. They bear the burden of expensive farm inputs, usurious interest rates imposed by moneylenders, and deepening debt that binds them to perpetual poverty. At the same time, they are squeezed by the low prices imposed on their produce and the rising cost of basic goods and services, further eroding their already meager incomes. Their situation has been aggravated by policies of import liberalization, which have resulted in a flood of imported rice, onions, garlic, and other agricultural products. These imports depress local farmgate prices and undermine domestic production, while peasants are left without protection or support. Environmental destruction—particularly deforestation—has worsened flooding and soil degradation, repeatedly destroying crops and livelihoods in already vulnerable rural areas.
Millions of peasants are now being forcibly driven from the land they cultivate. Widespread land grabbing is carried out by landlords, bourgeois compradors, and bureaucratic capitalists, who manipulate the courts and various agencies of the reactionary state to legitimize dispossession. Military and police forces are routinely deployed to enforce evictions and suppress resistance, clearing the way for the expansion of plantations, mining operations, ecotourism ventures, real estate developments, and so-called “renewable energy” projects such as large-scale solar farms, as well as schemes falsely promoted as “climate change mitigation” and "Sustainability".
Compounding these economic hardships is the intensification of fascist repression in the countryside. Military presence and counterinsurgency operations—such as the arbitrary imposition of restricted working hours on farms by armed soldiers—have further disrupted production and deepened the suffering of peasant communities. Under the guise of “security,” the state tightens control over rural life while doing nothing to address the fundamental problem of landlessness and exploitation.
This systematic dispossession reveals the true character of the present agrarian order: one that sacrifices peasant livelihoods, food security, and environmental sustainability to the profit interests of local elites and foreign capital, while maintaining rural poverty through force, law, and economic coercion. In recent years, the situation has further deteriorated. Millions of rural workers have lost employment as thousands of hectares of farmland are converted to non-agricultural use. Those displaced are compelled to accept exploitative farmwork arrangements, engage in precarious livelihoods within the agrarian and natural economy, or seek temporary and insecure work in nearby towns. This displacement is not accidental but the direct outcome of state policies that favor landlords, corporations, and foreign-backed projects over the needs of the rural masses.
The persistence of landlessness and rural exploitation thus exposes the class character of the present order: an agrarian crisis deliberately maintained to serve elite interests, while condemning the peasant masses to poverty, displacement, and repression.
A Dependent Economy in Permanent Crisis
The local economy continues to lack the capacity to meet the basic needs of the people or to lay the foundation for genuine national development. Production remains weak, distorted, and subordinated to foreign interests. Instead of building a self-reliant industrial base, the economy is tied to the importation of consumer and capital goods while being compelled to export raw or semi-processed materials and low-value assembled products made largely from imported components.
This pattern of production reveals the fundamentally dependent character of the economy. Far from being industrialized, the country functions primarily as a supplier of cheap labor, raw materials, and assembly services for foreign capital. Domestic industries are unable to develop vertically or technologically, as they are locked into subordinate roles within global production chains controlled by multinational corporations.
The economy remains heavily reliant on foreign capital and external borrowing. Despite pronouncements about strengthening local financing and the World Bank’s push to expand domestic borrowing, the underlying dependence on foreign investment, loans, and debt persists. These inflows do not serve national development but instead reinforce an economic structure geared toward profit repatriation, debt servicing, and compliance with externally imposed policy prescriptions.
The weakness of the manufacturing sector further exposes this structural crisis. Local manufacturing continues to decline due to reduced export orders and sluggish demand in the global market. This downturn is particularly evident in the electronics industry, long promoted as the backbone of export growth. In the early part of the year, exports of electronic products fell by nearly five percent, including semiconductors that account for a large share of foreign investment inflows and more than half of the country’s total exports.
Such figures underscore the vulnerability of an economy tied to a narrow export base and dependent on volatile international markets. When global demand contracts, the consequences are immediately borne by local workers through layoffs, wage suppression, and factory closures, while foreign firms simply shift production elsewhere in search of higher profits.
This persistent failure to develop a strong, diversified, and nationally controlled productive base is not the result of technical limitations, but of an economic strategy that prioritizes foreign capital, export dependence, and debt-driven growth over the needs of the people. As long as this dependent framework remains intact, the economy will continue to stagnate, and genuine development will remain beyond reach.
Unequal Trade and the Deepening External Imbalance
The country’s persistent trade deficit exposes the fundamentally unequal and dependent character of its economic relations with the global system. Despite repeated claims of recovery and stability, the economy continues to hemorrhage resources through trade arrangements that favor foreign producers and creditors at the expense of national development.
In 2024, the trade deficit widened further, reaching $54 billion, up from $52 billion in 2023. This chronic imbalance is expected to persist into 2025, underscoring the structural nature of the problem rather than a temporary fluctuation. The country imports far more than it exports, particularly high-value manufactured goods and capital equipment, while exporting primarily raw materials, semi-processed goods, and low-value assembly outputs. This unequal exchange drains domestic wealth and reinforces economic dependency.
More alarming is the sharp deterioration in the balance of payments—the overall account of foreign transactions including trade, income flows, remittances, foreign loans, aid, and investments. The balance of payments surplus collapsed by more than 83%, plunging from $3.7 billion in 2023 to just $609 million in 2024. This dramatic decline occurred despite the massive inflow of $38.34 billion in remittances from overseas Filipino workers.
These figures expose a stark contradiction. Even as millions of Filipinos labor abroad and remit billions of dollars to support their families and the national economy, these earnings are insufficient to offset the losses generated by unequal trade, profit repatriation by foreign corporations, debt servicing, and import dependence. Remittances function not as a sign of economic strength, but as a lifeline compensating for the failure of the domestic economy to generate adequate employment and production.
The persistent trade deficit and the collapse of the balance of payments surplus reveal an economy trapped in a cycle of dependence. The benefits of foreign trade and capital inflows accrue largely to multinational corporations, local elites, and creditors, while the burdens—rising prices, job insecurity, and fiscal pressure—are borne by the people.
As long as the economy remains oriented toward liberalized imports, export dependence, and foreign capital domination, these imbalances will continue to deepen. The data make clear that the crisis is not merely fiscal or technical, but structural—rooted in an economic order that sacrifices national development and popular welfare to the dictates of unequal trade and external control.
Rising Prices, Falling Lives:
The Crisis of the People’s Living Standards
The standard of living of the vast majority of the population continues to deteriorate as the cost of living relentlessly rises. Prices of basic necessities—most critically food and fuel—have climbed beyond the reach of ordinary working families, eroding wages and deepening poverty across both urban and rural areas.
Rice, the primary staple of the Filipino people, remains prohibitively expensive at ₱40–₱50 per kilo, placing a basic necessity out of reach for millions. At the same time, the costs of education, transportation, healthcare, housing, water, electricity, and other essential services continue to escalate. These services are increasingly controlled by private enterprises and big capitalists whose priority is profit rather than public welfare, leaving the people to shoulder the burden of privatization and deregulation.
The widening gap between wages and living costs is stark. The estimated living wage for a family of five stands at approximately ₱1,225 per day, reflecting the minimum income required to meet basic needs with dignity. In contrast, the daily minimum wage in the National Capital Region is only ₱695 as of July—barely half of what is required. In many regions outside the capital, minimum wages are even lower, condemning workers to permanent insufficiency despite full-time labor.
As a result, the mass of workers earning minimum wages remain mired in poverty. Families are forced to survive through debt, reduced food intake, overcrowded housing, and the sacrifice of education and healthcare. In urban centers, workers and their families are packed into cramped shantytowns, constantly threatened by demolition and eviction in favor of commercial and real estate projects.
Unemployment and underemployment further aggravate this crisis. Millions of jobless Filipinos line up daily in search of work, compelled to accept low-paying, contractual, or seasonal jobs under exploitative conditions. Job insecurity has become the norm, depriving workers of stable incomes, benefits, and any sense of economic security.
This decline in living standards is not the result of individual failure or temporary hardship. It is the inevitable outcome of an economic order that suppresses wages, deregulates prices, and prioritizes corporate profit over human need. As prices rise and wages stagnate, the people are made to absorb the cost of a crisis they did not create.
The data leave no room for denial: for the majority of the population, life has become more precarious, more expensive, and more uncertain. Until the roots of exploitation are addressed, the promise of “growth” will remain meaningless to those who struggle daily simply to survive.
A Society Divided: Petty Bourgeois Decline
and Elite Extravagance
To maintain even a semblance of relative comfort, broad sections of the petty bourgeoisie—teachers, ordinary government employees, small professionals, public transportation owners, small market vendors and stallholders, freelance and gig workers, call-center agents, and similar sectors—are compelled to work long and exhausting hours. Survival increasingly requires austerity, debt, and constant sacrifice. Amid a deepening social crisis, most can no longer save to own homes, build small capital, or secure their future. Many are rapidly pushed downward, sliding into the living conditions of the toiling masses.
This downward mobility is especially stark among the youth. Millions of young people are now unable to complete a college education due to soaring tuition fees and the rising costs of transportation, housing, food, and school requirements. Higher education, once seen as a pathway to stability, has become inaccessible to large segments of society, further narrowing opportunities and deepening inequality.
While the toiling masses and the precarious petty bourgeoisie struggle merely to survive, the ruling elite live in obscene luxury. They squander vast wealth on mansions and gated estates, fleets of luxury vehicles, private resorts and yachts, gold watches and jewelry, casino gambling, and constant jet-setting aboard private aircraft. This extravagance stands in sharp contrast to the daily deprivation endured by the majority of the population.
The result is an extreme and widening gap between the lives of the Filipino masses and those of the ruling elite. While the living conditions of the masses stagnate or deteriorate, the wealth of the big comprador bourgeoisie, landlords, and bureaucratic capitalists continues to balloon. Since Marcos assumed office, the combined wealth of the three richest individuals in the country—Enrique Razon, Manuel Villar, and Ramon Ang—has reportedly increased by 56%, rising from ₱485.6 billion to ₱1.3 trillion. Meanwhile, the combined wealth of the 50 richest Filipinos has grown by 25%, from ₱979 billion to ₱4.9 trillion. This obscene accumulation dwarfs the mere 7.5% wage increase granted to workers in the National Capital Region over the same period.
This wealth is accumulated not through productive national development, but through comprador and bureaucratic mechanisms. The ruling elite enrich themselves through partnerships with foreign big capitalists and banks, acting as agents in the export of raw materials—such as minerals, fruits, copra, marine products, rubber—and in the importation of manufactured goods and equipment. They serve as local managers for foreign investors who exploit cheap Filipino labor for assembly and export-oriented production. They are also at the forefront of land grabbing and the privatization of essential public services, including electricity, water, telecommunications, and transportation.
The ruling elite continues to control the largest banks, corporations, and conglomerates in the country. They bankroll and dominate major political parties and, in return, receive government favors in the form of lucrative contracts, tailor-made laws, infrastructure projects, regulatory exemptions, and favorable court decisions. Political power and economic power are fused, ensuring that wealth and privilege reproduce themselves at the expense of the people.
In partnership with US imperialism—and increasingly in accommodation with Chinese capital—the ruling elite perpetuate the country’s backward and dependent condition. They have no interest in developing basic industries, modernizing agriculture, or building a self-sufficient economy. On the contrary, they profit from underdevelopment, cheap labor, import dependence, and the plunder of natural resources.
Subservience and Strategic Rivalry:
The Philippines Between Empire and Hegemony
It is not surprising that, as in the past, the country continues to be bound to a subservient position—driven by opportunism or strategic calculation—to maintain the status quo. The ruling order, whether through rhetoric or policy, desperately tries to assume a “patriotic role” while advancing a geopolitical posture that ultimately sustains its dependency on external powers. Whether tied to the United States or engaging with China, this posture has deep implications for national sovereignty, economic autonomy, and people’s lives.
In the context of escalating disputes in the West Philippine Sea, the United States has used the situation to deepen its military footprint in the Philippines. Joint exercises such as Balikatan have grown in scale and complexity, involving thousands of troops and advanced systems to bolster interoperability and deterrence against perceived threats in the region. In 2025, Balikatan saw repeated maritime drills, coastal defense operations, and increasingly integrated planning between Philippine and U.S. forces, reflecting deeper security ties rather than isolated maneuvers.
Under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), the U.S. has secured access to multiple Philippine military sites for the construction of facilities, infrastructure improvements, and the rotational presence of U.S. forces. Additional EDCA sites were agreed upon in recent years, expanding beyond the original five bases to include locations such as Balabac in Palawan, Lal-lo Airport in Cagayan, and Camp Melchor Dela Cruz in Isabela, among others. These sites serve dual purposes: ostensibly to modernize Philippine defense capability while also entrenching U.S. strategic access across the archipelago. Beyond joint training, the U.S. is extending tangible military support. Planned construction of naval repair and maintenance facilities in Palawan—strategically adjacent to the South China Sea—illustrates the deepening defense relationship. These facilities are intended to support Philippine naval operations but also symbolize a more permanent U.S. operational presence projected into contested maritime spaces.
China’s actions in the West Philippine Sea continue to challenge Philippine sovereignty. Beijing maintains broad claims over the South China Sea—including areas within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone and continental shelf—despite a 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration that rejected China’s expansive claims. On the ground, China has reinforced its presence through artificial islands and infrastructure with strategic and potentially military utility. Such actions have resulted in repeated confrontations and interference with Filipino fishermen and patrol vessels throughout disputed waters.
However, the dispute is not solely about territorial claims or resource rights. It has become entangled in broader global contestations between major powers for influence, trade advantage, and regional dominance.
The conflict over the West Philippine Sea exists alongside intensifying economic tensions between the United States and China. The two powers are engaged in what some analysts describe as a “trade war” and strategic competition that aims to rebalance global supply chains, reduce dependencies, and wrest economic advantage from one another. Policies targeting trade imbalances, intellectual property, and currency manipulation have added pressure on countries that sit between these competing giants.
Obviously, it is a current nightmare for the United States to see China's rapid rise and development despite the fact that should be recalled that the United States was the principal country behind China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, following the opening of the Chinese economy to American and multinational businesses and the adoption of liberal economic policies within China. This was regarded as a major success, as it would integrate China into the capitalist world, and it was also expected that it could be used to weaken Russia (as the Soviet Union), which at the time was considered the primary adversary. The United States did not anticipate that, some thirty years later, China would emerge as a rival in controlling global trade and challenge American predominance. Nor did the U.S. foresee that a socialist economy could possess positive attributes such as centralized economic planning, control over key industries and finance, the development of research and technology, free education, and other social benefits, which could promote substantial growth. These fundamental characteristics, combined with the strategic use of market forces under capitalist standards, would propel rapid expansion and development.
Looking back at history, that coming from a largely under-industrialized nation, China has, in a mere decade, fully developed its key industries and manufacturing capabilities. Leveraging low labor costs to meet the needs of American and other global capitalists for inexpensive goods, manufacturing and industries from the United States and Europe shifted to China. Today, China stands as the center of global manufacturing. The inflow of capital and rising domestic income has, in turn, been used by China to expand and strengthen its material, financial, and technological capacity. These positive forces have fully propelled China to the status of a “world power” in finance, industry, technology, and social development.
And now China is trying to challenge U.S. dominance in these spheres. This is particularly alarming to Washington as it threatens the supremacy of the U.S. dollar in global finance. By promoting the use of other currencies as the basis of international transactions, China could effectively undermine the rules and structures of the global financial system centered on the dollar. This would signify the loss of American control over global finance—the pinnacle of its imperial power. The hidden strength of the dollar as the United States’ principal instrument for projecting power across the globe is evident in our own country.
For the Philippines, this broader rivalry plays out uneasily. Economically, the U.S. remains one of the country’s top export markets, accounting for a significant share of Philippine shipments, especially in electronics and semiconductors. At the same time, China is the Philippines’ largest source of imports, particularly in manufactured goods, intermediate parts, and consumer products. This structural asymmetry exposes Manila to economic pressures from both sides: slower growth in major markets, tariff shifts, and changing global demand may dampen export prospects.
Thus, while the Philippines leverages relationships with both powers, its economic dependency—characterized by trade imbalances and reliance on foreign capital and markets—limits its strategic autonomy. Beijing’s economic clout and Washington’s security umbrella can both be invoked as means of influence, often without fundamentally altering the country’s subordinate position in the global order.
The ruling elite frequently appeal to nationalist sentiment in justifying deepening ties with either the United States or China. Yet there is a marked difference between genuine nationalism rooted in sovereignty and social justice, and a politics that wraps dependency in the language of strategic necessity or hedging. On one hand, military cooperation with the United States is framed as necessary for national defense against external threats. On the other, economic engagement with China is often presented as indispensable for trade and investment. Both narratives can serve to obscure a more uncomfortable truth: that Philippine foreign relations are shaped less by autonomous strategic choice than by external pressures and the internal interests of local elites who benefit from these alignments.
Ultimately, the Philippines remains situated in a zone of neo-colonial influence and great-power rivalry, with its sovereignty and policymaking constrained by structural dependencies. The challenge for genuine independence—politically, economically, and militarily—requires a reorientation away from subservience and toward a people-centered foreign and domestic strategy. Only then can rhetoric of patriotism align with the lived realities of sovereignty, not strategic subordination.
Still, the Consolidation of “Good” and “Bad” Crooks
The neo-colonial state is mired in a deep and chronic political crisis. This crisis is marked by fierce factional struggles within the ruling elite and the growing isolation of the present Marcos regime from the broad masses of the people. While rival cliques within the ruling class appear locked in bitter conflict, these struggles do not represent a contest between opposing principles, but rather a reconfiguration of interests among equally corrupt and anti-people forces.
In recent years, this crisis has been sharply dramatized by the arrest and detention of former tyrant Rodrigo Duterte under the custody of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, on charges of crimes against humanity arising from the mass killings perpetrated under the sham “war on drugs.” The Marcos regime seized upon Duterte’s arrest as a convenient instrument to weaken a rival faction and to posture before the public as a supposed defender of the “rule of law.” This maneuver, however, did not reflect any genuine commitment to justice or accountability. Rather, it laid bare the cynical use of international legal mechanisms as weapons in inter-elite struggle.
The subsequent rift between the Marcos and Duterte factions, crystallized in the attempted impeachment of Sara Duterte, further exposed the true character of the ruling order. Progressive and democratic forces, acting in alliance with Duterte’s rivals in Congress, pushed for her impeachment on the basis of corruption and abuse of public trust. Yet once it became evident that a full airing of crimes and abuses would not stop with the Duterte camp but could implicate the Marcos clique itself, the impeachment process was abruptly blocked. Fearing political contagion, Marcos moved to halt the Senate trial, colluding openly with Duterte’s allies to suppress further investigation.
This episode once again demonstrated that when the survival of the ruling class is at stake, factional quarrels are quickly set aside. The bitter rivalry between contending cliques gives way to unity among plunderers, bound together by their common interest in preserving a corrupt, anti-people system and shielding one another from accountability.
The rotten character of the ruling political system was further exposed in the May elections, among the most corrupt and reactionary in recent memory. The polls were marked by brazen vote-buying, massive infusions of dirty money, violence, intimidation, and open manipulation of state machinery. Political accommodations were brokered behind closed doors, with the hand of foreign—particularly US—operators evident in the stabilization of outcomes favorable to the existing order. These elections did not express the will of the people, but rather the balance of power among competing elite factions.
Despite this hostile environment, the participation of progressive and patriotic parties was significant and politically meaningful. Their candidates, though subjected to harassment, red-tagging, and outright attacks by state armed forces, stood out for articulating the grievances of the masses, exposing the fraudulent nature of the elections, and advancing the people’s demands for national sovereignty, democratic rights, and social justice. Their presence underscored the growing polarization between the ruling classes and the people.
Amid a severe economic crisis and the relentless deterioration of the people’s living conditions, public outrage over corruption and plunder has intensified. This anger erupted most sharply with the exposure of massive embezzlement in anomalous flood-control and infrastructure projects. Investigations revealed that hundreds of billions of pesos in public funds were siphoned off by bureaucrat capitalists entrenched in the Department of Public Works and Highways, in collusion with congressmen, senators, and high-ranking officials of Malacañang. These projects, cynically justified in the name of disaster mitigation, became instruments for wholesale plunder, while floods, poverty, and displacement continued to ravage the people.
These scandals are not isolated excesses but expressions of a system in decay. The state apparatus functions as a machinery for bureaucratic capitalism, enabling the accumulation of wealth by a narrow elite through corruption, state contracts, and foreign-funded projects. The competition between rival factions—between so-called “good” and “bad” crooks—is ultimately a struggle over access to the same sources of plunder.
Thus, beneath the noise of factional conflict lies a deeper unity: unity in defending the existing social order. The ruling elite may quarrel over spoils, but they remain united in suppressing the masses, preserving foreign domination, and maintaining a system that breeds exploitation, corruption, and repression.
The present political crisis therefore cannot be resolved through the reshuffling of personalities or the replacement of one clique by another. It is a crisis of the neo-colonial and semi-feudal system itself. As long as this system endures, the consolidation of “good” and “bad” crooks will continue—at the expense of the Filipino people, whose growing resistance signals the sharpening contradictions of an unjust and unsustainable order.
The system has to "defend" itself
regardless of being corrupted
True to the fact that the administration, like the past ones, sworn to uphold the status quo- also include defending it against those who assert the need for radical change.
Mounting public anger over corruption and the diversion of public funds has, in recent months, translated into a series of sustained protest actions across the country. These demonstrations—largely initiated by students and youth organizations, with growing participation from workers, church groups, and other civic sectors—reflect a broader regional pattern of popular unrest directed against entrenched corruption and authoritarian governance, as seen previously in Nepal and Indonesia, and more recently in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
In response to this pressure, the administration announced the formation of an “Independent Commission on Infrastructure,” publicly mandated to investigate allegations of corruption involving senior government officials, bureaucratic agencies, and private contractors engaged in public works. Interviews indicate that this initiative was widely perceived as a tactical concession rather than a genuine effort at accountability. Protest activity continued, driven by long-standing public distrust of state institutions and the absence of credible judicial redress.
By midyear, the government shifted decisively toward coercive measures. Police and military units were increasingly deployed to disperse assemblies and restrict the exercise of basic civil liberties. On September 21—the anniversary of the 1972 declaration of martial law—security forces arrested more than 270 demonstrators in the Mendiola area following clashes with protest groups. Eyewitness accounts collected by legal aid organizations describe the use of force disproportionate to the actions of demonstrators, many of whom were unarmed students. Subsequently, during a large mobilization on November 30, the area surrounding Malacañang Palace was effectively sealed off. Thousands of police personnel were stationed to prevent demonstrators from approaching government offices. Church observers reported that access routes were blocked well in advance of the rally, suggesting premeditated measures to deny protesters visibility rather than to ensure public safety.
The suppression of public assemblies must be understood within a broader pattern of state repression. Earlier this year, the administration adopted the National Action Plan for Unity, Peace and Development (NAP-UPD), which now serves as the principal framework for internal security operations. While officially framed as a counterinsurgency initiative, documentation gathered by human rights monitors indicates that NAP-UPD has been used to justify systematic restrictions on freedom of association, expression, and political participation. Under this framework, the Anti-Terror Law and the Anti-Financing Terrorism Law have been applied expansively against legal mass organizations, trade unions, student groups, and civil society formations. These groups are frequently “linked” to armed revolutionary movements through public statements by military or police officials, absent judicial findings or evidentiary proceedings. Such labeling has had a chilling effect on lawful political activity.
In urban areas, credible reports point to sustained surveillance and harassment aimed at discouraging labor organizing and youth mobilization. Known protest leaders have been subjected to repeated police “home visits,” during which officers urge individuals to withdraw from organizations and refrain from future participation in demonstrations. Legal advocates report an increase in fabricated or exaggerated criminal charges, including threats of prosecution against more than ninety youth leaders connected to the September 21 mobilization.
Conditions in rural areas raise even more serious concerns. Field reports gathered by church missions and peasant support groups indicate that, under NAP-UPD, the Armed Forces of the Philippines—working in coordination with the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC)—have effectively imposed martial-law–like conditions in hundreds of barangays. These include curfews, restrictions on farm work hours, compulsory logbooks to track residents’ movements, limits on rice purchases, and other mechanisms of population control.
Military detachments have been established in or near peasant communities identified as “areas of concern,” often on the basis of unverified intelligence alleging sympathy for the New People’s Army. Residents interviewed consistently report that these measures disrupt livelihoods, create an atmosphere of fear, and blur the distinction between civilian populations and armed actors.
Historical experience in comparable contexts suggests that such measures, while temporarily suppressing open dissent, tend to deepen grievances and erode the legitimacy of governing institutions. As restrictions intensify, so too does the resolve among affected communities to resist, whether through continued protest, legal challenges, or other forms of political action.
Order Without Justice Is Violence:
Why Revolt Becomes Legitimate in a Rotten Social Order
These conditions do more than justify revolt in theory—they force it into the realm of lived reality. Call it idealism, or dismiss it as irrelevant in an age dominated by social media narratives and appeals to a so‑called “rules‑based order,” but the truth is stark: the present social order weaponizes “law” not to defend justice but to protect entrenched elite privilege. The law is bent and molded to uphold an artificial sense of stability—one that preserves elite interests at the expense of the people’s socio‑national aspirations.
This is not mere rhetoric. Public opinion data shows that inflation and corruption are the top concerns of Filipinos today—with 59% expressing inflation as an urgent concern and 48% identifying graft and corruption among their most pressing issues. Fighting corruption and raising workers’ pay remain central demands, alongside access to affordable food and reducing poverty.
At the same time, support for wage increases is overwhelming: a recent survey found that 83% of adult Filipinos support a proposed ₱200 daily wage hike in recognition that current wages no longer meet the rising cost of living—a sentiment cutting across income groups and regions.
But these economic anxieties are not abstract. They are rooted in a lived crisis: rice prices have surged above ₱50 per kilo in Metro Manila, driving millions deeper into poverty and hunger as inflation continues to outpace wage growth. Meanwhile, surveys show that self‑rated poverty reached 63% in late 2024—its highest level in more than two decades—accompanied by rising involuntary hunger among households.
These material grievances animate public protest. Throughout 2025, workers’ groups and rural organizations have taken to the streets calling for a ₱1,200 living wage—a figure benchmarked not against bumper sticker politics but against the actual cost of feeding and sheltering a family of five. Teachers, meanwhile, have organized Black Friday demonstrations denouncing low salaries, chronic underfunding, and corruption in education budgets—highlighting how even those considered part of the “respectable” petty bourgeoisie have been pushed to social action by systemic neglect.
In this context, it is no surprise that the idea of revolt gains traction. History has repeatedly shown that when structural injustice persists—landlessness, stagnant wages, economic insecurity, foreign intervention, and state terror—the idea of resistance moves swiftly from the margins to the mainstream of collective consciousness.
The ruling order attempts to inoculate itself with narratives of “development” or “order” while deploying the instruments of violence: red‑tagging, harassment, warrantless arrests, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances continue to be used against organizers and activists. The state’s security apparatus brands dissent as “subversive” or “terroristic,” while media outlets and paid trolls churn out disinformation to discredit genuine grievances. This pattern is not unique to the Philippines—it resonates with global youth and labor movements confronting entrenched elites and systemic inequality.
Online harassment surrounding the ICC arrest of former President Duterte, for instance, has included organized campaigns of disinformation and personal attacks, reflecting how political violence extends beyond the streets into digital life.
Yet repression has never succeeded in silencing collective consciousness. On the contrary, when the formal “law” is marshaled to protect elite plunder while ordinary people go hungry and overworked, it delegitimizes itself and strengthens the resolve of those resisting.
This is why calls for transparency and accountability have translated into sustained mass mobilizations. The Trillion Peso March and other large demonstrations in 2025 have drawn broad participation—workers, students, urban poor, teachers, and religious communities—demanding institutional reform, accountability for corruption, and an end to the political and economic order that has abandoned the majority. 
These movements reveal a critical lesson: the fear of repression does not extinguish the search for justice; the reality of injustice fuels it. In a society where the law serves the powerful and order shields plunder, resistance becomes not just defensible but necessary. When the people recognize that the structures of governance protect elites rather than serve masses, their collective understanding transforms fear into determination—and that transformation is the foundation of revolt.
