Against the Spectacle: Reclaiming the Nation's Call
for Truth, Justice, Accountability, and Transparency
from the Manufactured Machinery of Power guised as Unity
In the wake of the recent protests against corruption, a familiar script has resurfaced—one that seeks to downplay public outrage simply because the crowds were not as massive as some expected. Critics mock the demonstrations, treating them as insignificant compared to the “non-partisan activity” of the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) weeks earlier, which drew larger numbers only to later reveal its own political undertones aligned with another faction of the ruling elite. This comparison—deliberate or not—misses the point entirely. It exposes how power continues to weaponize crowd size, selective morality, and institutional loyalty to delegitimize genuine dissent, while elevating spectacles that serve entrenched political interests. The protests, though smaller, speak to a deeper frustration: a growing refusal among ordinary citizens to accept corruption as normal, and a resistance to narratives that try to make public anger appear trivial simply because it does not enjoy the backing of a well-oiled political machine.
When someone sneers, “Pa Let Leni Lead pa kayo; di nga kayo maka-10k kahit kasama na lahat ng taga-bundok at party-list na Pink,”* and follows it with the claim that “The Catholic Church cannot lead like INC because the Church is already corrupt,” it reveals more about the political culture than about any religious institution.
If the accusation is corruption, then the obvious question is: Why, then, did a sect known for bloc voting openly support Marcos and Duterte in 2022—candidates whose own camps were marred by corruption, disinformation, and controversy? The answer lies in the nature of political alliances in the Philippines: they are rarely about morality, accountability, or truth. They are often transactional, premised on short-term gains, negotiated access, and a simplistic narrative packaged as “unity.”
The idea of “unity” in 2022 was fundamentally shallow by design—it was not unity for justice, reform, or honest governance. It was unity built on avoiding hard questions, reducing complex issues into single-sentence slogans, and appealing to a tired public longing for stability after years of pandemic, crisis, and institutional exhaustion. Many voters—particularly those with limited political engagement—gravitate to the simplest explanation offered to them, especially when amplified by machinery, cash, and charismatic storytelling.
This is why even communities or institutions accused of corruption can still claim the moral high ground in public discourse: the electorate is conditioned to accept surface-level narratives, not structural critiques. The emphasis is on emotional resonance rather than governance.
Moreover, sectors like the INC do not operate on the same principle as the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is internally diverse, decentralized in many respects, and contains progressive, conservative, apolitical, and even indifferent factions. It cannot command a unified political vote. In contrast, bloc-voting groups negotiate directly with powerholders—leading to tactical endorsements that are less about morality and more about political survival and institutional advantage.
So when observers point out the contradiction—“If you call the Church corrupt, why did you support candidates equally or even more controversial?”—the silence is telling. Because the endorsement was not based on ethics. It was based on:
• the power of machinery and patronage
• the desire for access to the next administration
• the seductive simplicity of “unity” versus the difficult truths of reform
• and the public’s fatigue toward long, complex explanations, favoring instead quick slogans
In short, the masses were not mobilized by a deep ideological commitment, but by a narrative engineered to be easy, comforting, and politically advantageous for those who crafted it—even if it was hollow.
Thus, the real issue is not whether the Catholic Church is corrupt or whether INC can “lead better.” The real issue is that political discourse has been reduced to spectacle, where contradiction, selective morality, and convenient amnesia shape electoral choices. Under such conditions, even institutions accused of corruption can influence national politics—so long as they align with the prevailing machinery of power.
Lenin once warned that “Politics is the most concentrated expression of economics.” In a landscape where alliances are transactional, endorsements are not moral judgments but economic calculations—bargains struck to preserve influence, visibility, and institutional leverage.
Marx likewise observed that “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.” Today, those ruling ideas manifest as the weaponization of crowd size, the normalization of corruption when it benefits the powerful, and the derision of dissent when it challenges the narratives of those in control.
And it is here that the words Andres Bonifacio did resonate:
“Reason teaches us that we must be united in will, united in thought, and that we might have strength to search out the reigning evil in our Nation. This is the time for the light of truth to surface; this is the time for us to show that we have our own sentiments, have honour, have shame, and have solidarity.”
Bonifacio’s call was not for blind obedience to authority, but for the courage to resist any system—colonial or local—that treats the people as mere accessories to power.
Placed alongside today’s context, these words echo sharply:
A people cannot be expected to accept corruption, hypocrisy, or transactional politics simply because those in power say it is normal.
Nor can dissent be dismissed simply because it lacks the machinery of groups aligned with the ruling factions.
To paraphrase the spirit of Lenin, Marx, and Bonifacio: "The struggle is always between those who benefit from maintaining illusions and those who insist on exposing them."
And in this struggle, even small protests matter—not because of their size, but because they refuse to let the narrative be dictated solely by the machinery of the powerful.
Against the machinery of power, unity grounded in ethical clarity—not slogans—becomes its own form of resistance. Even small protests matter, not because of the numbers they gather, but because they refuse to surrender truth to spectacle, or conscience to convenience.
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