On Sunday, September 21, tens of thousands of Filipinos flooded Manila’s most iconic protest sites—Luneta, Liwasang Bonifacio, and the EDSA People Power Monument—with a singular demand: accountability for systemic corruption in government.
Ironically, the outrage was ignited not by a whistleblower or journalist, but by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. himself. In his State of the Nation Address, he delivered a scathing rebuke: “Shame on you,” he said to those who squandered public funds on substandard, incomplete, and non-existent flood control projects. The statement, delivered with firm conviction, struck many as both audacious and absurd. After all, the contracts now under investigation were approved under his own administration. His call for justice sounded less like leadership and more like a match struck over dry tinder.
The backlash was swift. Leadership reshuffles swept through both houses of Congress. But for a public battered by scandal and decades of impunity, cosmetic changes weren’t enough. They want names. They want charges. They want those who turned public infrastructure into private wealth—into luxury cars, high-rise condos, and hidden vaults of untraceable cash—dragged into the light.
Just days before the protests, Marcos addressed the nation from the Palace, acknowledging the groundswell of anger. “They’re angry. I am too. If I weren’t president,” he said, “I’d be marching too.” It was a carefully crafted gesture of solidarity. But on the streets, it rang hollow.
Most demonstrations remained peaceful. But near Malacañang, the tone shifted. Black-clad groups—young, masked, fast-moving—splintered from the main crowd. Molotovs were thrown. Fires lit the night. Protest bled into riot, then looting.
Television footage captured the chaos: teenagers pelting police with rocks, setting fires, storming a hotel, ransacking property, and robbing terrified staff. One hotel employee, visibly shaken, asked how he’d get home without the license stolen from his wallet. At that point, you begin to ask: what’s worse—the rot at the top, or the breakdown below?
Police made dozens of arrests. Many were minors. But their movements were coordinated—disciplined, even. Authorities now suspect organized actors may have been embedded in the mayhem, steering events toward violence for purposes still unknown.
Elsewhere in the city, tensions flared in quieter, but no less telling ways. At a nearby pro-Duterte rally, a Catholic nun was invited to speak. She called for dialogue and restraint. The crowd turned on her. She was booed, her microphone yanked, and she was escorted off the stage.
At Mendiola, a TV5 journalist was harassed live on air by protesters furious over coverage linking them to the violence. As the situation escalated, riot police stepped in. One officer quietly moved the reporter to safety.
The demands now echoing across the capital vary in tone and urgency. Some call for impeachment. Others demand prosecutions. Still others, jaded by the entire political system, ask only for calm.
What remains is a nation at a crossroads—its institutions tested, its leaders cornered, its people fractured.
The truth lies buried beneath clashing narratives, political deflections, and raw emotion. But one thing is certain: unless the country regains clarity and cohesion—unless it can speak with one voice—the unrest will only deepen. And once again, the true culprits will vanish into the shadows, untouched, laughing beneath their P300,000 umbrellas while the rest of the nation stands knee-deep in floodwaters, watching the storm roll on.
A real, real shame.
