“Justice vs. the Corrupt: Or Should We Blow Up Their Headquarters?”

“Justice vs. the Corrupt: Or Should We Blow Up Their Headquarters?”

It is both fitting and just that the Filipino people commemorate the 40th anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolution—that four-day civic rising in February 1986 which delivered the final blow to a fourteen-year authoritarian rule under Ferdinand Marcos Sr., and marked the culmination of a long and costly struggle to restore constitutional democracy in this Republic.

To mark EDSA in 2026 is not merely to revisit a triumph of memory, but to confront the burdens of history that remain unresolved. The anniversary is being observed not in a climate of settled confidence, but in an atmosphere thick with public disquiet—over mounting allegations of corruption in major infrastructure and flood control undertakings, and the apparent dissipation of public funds meant to safeguard lives, livelihoods, and communities from disaster.

Since September 2025, protest actions have grown in scale and frequency across the archipelago. The people’s anger—long restrained by fatigue, division, or the passage of time—has once again found expression in the civic square. There is, in the temper of the moment, a familiar cadence: the insistence that public office is a public trust, and that those entrusted with authority must be answerable to the sovereign people from whom that authority is derived.

Forty years after 1986, another Marcos—Ferdinand Marcos Jr.—stands at the center of public scrutiny. Renewed calls for accountability have reached to the highest levels of government, following reports suggesting collusion between officials of Malacañang and the Department of Public Works and Highways in the alleged orchestration of kickback schemes tied to infrastructure disbursements.

Recent congressional action—notably the dismissal of impeachment complaints—has drawn criticism from sectors concerned that avenues for public disclosure and institutional redress may have been prematurely foreclosed. Questions persist over the alleged delivery of illicit funds amounting to as much as ₱8 billion to private residences in Forbes Park, reportedly linked to figures such as Martin Romualdez. Various political formations, including Akbayan, have advanced competing narratives of reform and responsibility, even as the national discourse becomes increasingly polarized.

Yet it must be said with clarity: opposition to one political formation does not imply endorsement of another. The controversies surrounding Vice President Sara Duterte—particularly in relation to the use and liquidation of confidential funds by the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education—have likewise stirred grave public concern.

Unexplained wealth allegations have been linked to broader claims of irregular confidential fund disbursements amounting to at least ₱612.5 million from December 2022 to the third quarter of 2023, covering both offices. In 2023 alone, the Office of the President recorded the largest expenditures of both confidential and intelligence funds—₱2.25 billion and ₱2.31 billion respectively—according to the annual financial report of the Commission on Audit on national government agencies. A breakdown by the same constitutional body showed that ₱4.4 billion in confidential funds and another ₱6.02 billion in intelligence funds were spent by the entire national government last year, or a total of ₱10.4 billion. Of this, ₱375 million in confidential funds was disbursed by the Office of the Vice President in 2023.

The complaint likewise cites the rapid encashment of ₱125 million in December 2022—allegedly liquidated within eleven days—and subsequent findings by the Commission on Audit flagging irregularities. Notices of suspension and disallowance were later issued covering ₱73.287 million in questioned expenditures, including allegedly fabricated or defective receipts, unverifiable payees, and duplicated entries, as well as sworn affidavits describing the transport of large sums of cash in duffel bags.

Again, the bullshirtry is not all about who's really the "corruptest amongst the corrupt". Duterte supporters would cry that the president who's "high on drugs" benefited from the flood control scandal yet the ones involved were already there during the time Duterte boasted his "Build Build Build". Marcos supporters would cry about Sara Duterte's abuse of public funds in the Office of the Vice President and in the Department of Education, yet mum on Marcos's tax issues prior to his assumption as president. Again, who's the corruptest amongst the corrupt? Or should revisit again the late Jose Avelino's term "good and bad crooks"?

This pattern is not without precedent. Across successive administrations, scandal has too often intruded upon governance: from misuse of JICA funds, "Kamaganak Inc.", PEA-Amari to Jueteng, from NBN-ZTE to pork barrel abuses, all to the Pharmally procurement controversy. Each episode has deepened the perception—whether justified or not—that the institutions of the state remain vulnerable to the corrosions of patronage, influence, and private accumulation- hence, this bullshitry makes a concerned expressed the need to "blow up the headquarters" as the "headquarters" itself is jampacked with the corrupt and self-centric bureaucrats, officials, politicians, and personalities trying to siphon from the laboring masses. 

Why "blow up the headquarters"? Sorry to use Mao's "big character poster" that pointly against the "capitialist roaders" with all its arrogance against the people, urging the masses to "bombard the headquarters". But come to think of this- the headquarters itself was and is riddled with corruption, injustice, self-interest at the expense of the people, will the people just stand by and seeing authorities "distort" ideas for their interest? Just imagine how Marcoses peddled the idea of a "New Philippines" the way Duterte peddled that his "Change" came to the hearts and minds of Filipinos- and yet scandals like flood control, Pharmally, the abuse of confidential funds in 11 days, come to think of this- all in that same headquarters meant to be to "serve the people"? Yes, may as well "bombard the headquarters" as the people have enough of their arrogance while deflate the morale of the people who wished for a better way of life. 

It is also in this light that the commemoration of EDSA must be understood—not as an exercise in nostalgia, nor as a ritual of self-congratulation—but as a civic reckoning. The promise of 1986 was not solely the restoration of simply "democratic" values such as electoral processes, or the renewal of public faith in the probity of institutions, but also the primacy of law and justice, and the accountability of those who govern.

Today, amid rising commodity prices, precarious employment, uneven recovery, and the mounting toll of environmental distress, the call—especially from the youth and the laboring citizenry—is once more for reform that is substantive rather than symbolic, for accountability that is systemic rather than selective, and for a political order that reflects not merely the arithmetic of power, but the ethics of service.

In the measured yet unmistakable language of another era, the 40th anniversary of EDSA in 2026 is not only a remembrance of what was won—but a reminder of what remains to be fulfilled.