[Rear View] Punch drunk however nonetheless optimistic? Cue ‘I Will Survive’

Luck just isn’t a method for survival. It’s like wishing for rain and getting soaked in a turd storm of your personal making.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has managed to outlive 2025. Battered, bruised, and visibly drained however nonetheless standing. He in all probability wakes up each morning feeling punch drunk. He’s nonetheless in a position to cope with intrigues, brickbats, destabilization makes an attempt, and the opposite calls for of the presidency each day whereas wanting blissful in entrance of the digital camera. Drained, however blissful.  

On-line pundits and analysts have attributed his survival to a confluence of occasions and personalities. To place it plainly, he’s simply fortunate. 

Fortunate that the constitutional successor is taken into account unfit for the job, to not point out pro-China. Fortunate that the general public has grown bored with coups and demos to unseat an elected president. Fortunate that the organized opposition forces are bickering. At this level, there may be actually nothing a lot he can maintain on to. 

Luck, nonetheless, just isn’t a method for survival. It’s like wishing for rain and getting soaked in a turd storm of your personal making. The President must get issues shifting within the route he desires to take the nation. 

However the place precisely?

The incoming yr will probably be much more difficult if he continues to focus all his energies on reclaiming the ethical excessive floor on corruption, a lose-lose proposition.

For one, 2026 will mark the fortieth anniversary of the February 1986 EDSA Revolution. Critics will conveniently use this occasion to remind the general public of the Marcos household’s tarnished file on human rights and corruption. It might even present a rallying level for warring opposition forces, a chance to retract their fangs and maintain arms on EDSA, even only for this occasion.  

The President and his advisers have in all probability anticipated such a situation. This might clarify his surprising embrace of the liberal progressive’s legislative agenda, a transfer that would additional drive a wedge between the militant and centrist wings of the opposition (Initially welcomed, a number of progressive leaders have now known as the transfer half-hearted and insincere). 

He must be seen as decisive in coping with the reported involvement of relations, aides, and former Cupboard officers in finances insertions and corruption. This has been the weak level of his campaign. Whereas the President exudes certainty and management every time he updates the general public by way of social media on the standing of his anti-corruption campaign, his spokespersons have been imprecise, or plain evasive, when requested about hyperlinks between contractors and the Palace.

Sara, costs and jobs

Then there’s Vice President Sara Duterte. 

The corruption scandal gave the Vice President the room to consolidate political help. A pre-election survey carried out by the polling agency WR Numero gave Duterte the highest slot (33.3%) amongst potential presidential candidates in 2028. 

A Duterte 2.0 presidency will probably be unhealthy for the nation and disastrous for the President and his household. Concerted efforts ought to now shift to shining the cruel gentle of public scrutiny on the Vice President. Current revelations of alleged offshore gaming and drug cash funneled to the Vice President and the submitting of a plunder criticism towards her earlier than a reinvigorated Ombudsman might sign the beginning of the offensive.

With public focus and strain shifting to the courts by subsequent yr, the President can change the nationwide dialog and refocus on the problems that matter most to bizarre Filipinos: costs and jobs.

In latest surveys, corruption rose within the hierarchy of considerations as a result of the President himself has chosen to carry it to the general public’s consideration. For this, he obtained a failing grade. Costs and jobs stay the highest considerations, however his approval scores, or how the general public grades his efforts to deal with these two considerations, additionally dropped considerably. He should present that he can be as swift and decisive in addressing the problems of jobs and costs. 

Throughout the annual Christmas occasion of the Malacañang press corps, the President, in his remarks, used the phrases “ache,” “problem,” and “anguish” to explain what the nation goes via within the aftermath of his revelations of large-scale corruption in flood management initiatives. Nonetheless, these phrases would possibly as nicely describe what he’s going via, and can undergo, maybe with larger depth, within the coming yr.

Mired in an argument he created, the President, for now, just isn’t surging ahead however operating in place. Nonetheless, he stays optimistic about his future.  As he advised Palace reporters, his administration is aware of what to do. 

Cue Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive. – Rappler.com

Joey Salgado is a former journalist, and a authorities and political communications practitioner. He served as spokesperson for former vice chairman Jejomar Binay.