[Vantage Point] Why Marcos Jr. can survive ouster calls and destructive rankings

The pathways that when unseated presidents not carry decisive drive. Army adventurism has been institutionally neutralized, and collapsing belief rankings — whereas politically damaging — not translate into removing from workplace. If a sitting president have been ever to be unseated, it could not come from the streets or the barracks, however from the Structure itself. Impeachment, with all its rigor and political value, stays the one reputable mechanism for eradicating President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. — a course of that calls for proof, due course of, and congressional will, not noise, stress, or manufactured outrage. However even this avenue, due to how the current Congress is constituted, can be subsequent to not possible to succeed.

This column doesn’t argue for or towards that consequence, nor does it function a protection of the administration or an assault on Vice President Sara Duterte. It’s an examination of political actuality because it exists, not as factions want it to be. The evaluation rests on observable shifts: a professionalized navy, an citizens formed by financial threat, and establishments that now take up anger with out collapsing. In that context, accountability should function by means of regulation, not spectacle — and understanding that fact is crucial earlier than the nation errors political theater for constitutional treatment.

That there’s a credible try to destabilize the Marcos administration is an understatement. Some teams out and in of the Duterte circle have been attempting to fire up unrest to cowl up for its personal crimes, utilizing the scandal as its platform. They invoke the language of ethical outrage, whereas fastidiously avoiding the more durable query: who advantages when accountability is short-circuited into regime change?

The nation doesn’t want one other political collapse engineered by actors who thrive underneath impunity. It wants a president compelled to complete what he began: prosecution that climbs, reforms that illuminate the funds’s darkest corners, and convictions that restore consequence to abuse of energy. 

The demand shouldn’t be for Marcos Jr. to step down, however for him to step by means of — to hold accountability previous speeches, previous surveys, and previous stress from operators who mistake destabilization for salvation. In a system that has discovered to soak up anger with out altering, resignation is the simple exit. 

From my vantage level, in a constitutional democracy, navy loyalty will not be private — it’s institutional. It’s owed to the Structure, the chain of command, and the civilian authority established by regulation, and to not any particular person chief. This distinction is crucial when a senior officer publicly or implicitly withdraws help for the President, who, by design, serves as Commander-in-Chief. A soldier’s obligation is obedience, however solely inside the bounds of regulation, honor, and constitutional mandate.

When such withdrawal is pushed by private disagreement, political affiliation, or factional sympathy, it marks a harmful breach of civil-military norms. Armed forces don’t select presidents or referee politics; they serve the workplace vested by the folks. Any sign of conditional loyalty — particularly from senior ranks — dangers unsettling morale, cohesion, and self-discipline. The correct response to irreconcilable battle will not be symbolic dissent, however lawful compliance or principled resignation. The soldier’s highest loyalty is to civilian supremacy and the rule of regulation — the quiet self-discipline that retains a republic intact.

The absence of revolt within the Philippines is commonly misinterpret as approval. It isn’t. It’s inertia — produced by establishments that dampen disruption and narratives that redirect outrage. This explains why the nation can take up its largest corruption scandal in many years — ₱79 billion in suspected flood-control plunder — with out tanks on the streets, at the same time as dissatisfaction simmers slightly below the floor.

The decisive purpose revolt has fallen out of vogue will not be political fatigue or civic apathy. It’s financial actuality. The Philippines is navigating a fragile transition towards upper-middle-income standing, and that transition rests on a basis that can’t face up to political shock. This yr, upheaval is not a device of correction; it’s an act of self-harm.

Stability is all that issues

This begins with a fact Filipinos perceive instinctively: stability feeds the family. After years of inflationary stress, common inflation fell to 1.7% in 2025. On paper, it’s a statistic. On the bottom, it means cheaper rice, predictable transport prices, and respiration room for households residing from paycheck to paycheck. Any political motion that threatens that reduction is instantly suspect.

That progress is bolstered by the nation’s exterior standing. A BBB+ Constructive sovereign credit standing locations the Philippines one notch under the coveted “A” class. Crossing that line would decrease borrowing prices, entice longer-term capital, and develop fiscal house for infrastructure, schooling, and well being. It will sign commencement from volatility to predictability. However this complete trajectory will depend on a single, fragile enter: confidence.

In 2026, world capital doesn’t look forward to readability. It strikes on the first trace of dysfunction. Portfolio traders rebalance immediately. Multinationals pause expansions. Enterprise-process outsourcing companies activate contingency plans that shift operations to Vietnam, India, or Indonesia. I see these selections not as ideological, however algorithmic. Political theater registers as threat, and threat is priced instantly.

For this reason fashionable revolts fail earlier than they start. The suggestions loop is swift and unforgiving. Foreign money volatility raises import prices. Borrowing charges spike. Fairness markets sag. Hiring freezes ripple throughout providers and manufacturing. What begins as a name for “change” ends as job losses for individuals who had nothing to do with elite energy struggles. For the typical Filipino, stability is not a philosophical desire; it’s a survival technique. A revolt immediately wouldn’t ship freedom. It will produce a shuttered economic system.

Restricted tolerance dysfunction

The Philippines’ march towards upper-middle-income standing has narrowed tolerance for disruption. At lower-income ranges, instability is usually accepted as the value of change. At this stage, instability turns into prohibitively costly. Development now will depend on continuity — regular funding, predictable coverage, and credible establishments. After pandemics, provide shocks, and inflation surges, voters have discovered how shortly good points evaporate. The result’s a quiet consensus: grievances are actual, however they have to be resolved with out detonating the economic system.

Nothing illustrates this higher than the ₱6.793-trillion 2026 Common Appropriations Act (GAA) — one of many largest and most socially focused budgets in Philippine historical past. Training receives file funding. Agriculture secures its strongest allocation in over a decade. Well being, infrastructure, and social providers are calibrated to shut long-standing gaps. Positively, this funds will not be an abstraction. We will view it as school rooms, irrigation, clinics, scholarships, and native jobs.

When destabilization escalates into political disaster, it doesn’t merely weaken a presidency; it assaults the GAA fund. Each week spent firefighting manufactured turmoil is every week stolen from implementation. Each delayed venture compounds inefficiency. On this context, calls to upend the federal government with out constitutional trigger usually are not acts of braveness. They’re acts of fiscal vandalism.

Political theater carries hidden prices. Disaster administration consumes government bandwidth. Coverage planning stalls. Regulators retreat into threat aversion. The cumulative impact is paralysis — an invisible tax on progress that hits hardest on the margins. Farmers ready for help achieve nothing from televised outrage. Traders deciding whether or not to construct factories don’t distinguish between righteous anger and reckless instability. They see solely threat.

Stability because the New Revolution

Likewise, navy intervention is not viable. The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is extra professionalized, higher compensated, and extra deeply embedded in institutional incentives than at any level since 1986. Pensions, procurement, promotions, and post-service careers are tied to stability, not adventurism. Coups as soon as thrived on ambiguity. At the moment, they fail on predictability and value.

Folks Energy has additionally structurally decayed — not as a result of Filipinos are apathetic, however as a result of mobilization has been atomized. Anger disperses into timelines; it doesn’t converge fairly in public squares. Disinformation fractures consensus quicker than outrage can consolidate it. Protest will not be suppressed; it’s diluted. Financial precarity completes the lure. When family margins skinny, revolt turns into a luxurious. Survival dominates. Dole-out applications anesthetize unrest simply sufficient to forestall ignition — creating not stability, however managed stagnation.

That is the place polling enters the story — not as a rebuttal, however as corroboration. Surveys don’t arbitrate fact; they measure narrative penetration. In a political tradition formed by personalism and tribal loyalty, respondents can rank corruption as a high concern, whereas trusting figures persistently linked to graft and corruption. This isn’t a polling error. It’s cognitive dissonance embedded within the system.

The sturdiness of Sara Duterte in surveys displays the lingering energy of strongman mythology, which reframes accusations as persecution and opacity as energy. Polls file this faithfully with out interrogating it. Against this, Marcos Jr. suffers from fatigue with out a counter-myth: a technocratic presidency in a tradition that prizes symbolism over techniques. Indifference, in surveys, is deadlier than anger.

Taken collectively, the absence of revolt and the paradox of polling reveal the identical structural failure: accountability has been decoupled from each mass motion and public opinion. Revolts not erupt as a result of incentives suppress escalation. Surveys not right habits as a result of notion has been severed from proof. Between them lies a void the place corruption metastasizes with out consequence.

Marcos Jr. doesn’t face tanks or crowds. He faces normalization. On this atmosphere, legitimacy is not earned by means of reputation or survival, however by means of enforcement. Convictions — not speeches, committees, or surveys — are actually the one credible sign of reform. 

For the rabblerousers, invoking the Structure to justify its violation is a pitch that not persuades. Filipinos have grown clear-eyed about who actually bears the price of upheaval: not the loudest agitators, usually insulated by wealth and offshore choices, however bizarre residents whose livelihoods depend upon continuity and peace. Chaos is a luxurious for the few; stability is a necessity for the various.

In 2026, the nation’s most radical act will not be rise up however resolve — the insistence that disputes be settled inside the establishments we constructed, by means of courts that determine, legislatures that deliberate, and ballots that right. The age of freeway revolutions has given approach to the more durable work of nation-building, the place credibility with traders and constancy to the rule of regulation — not spectacle — outline progress and energy.

The Philippines of immediately neither topples leaders within the streets nor corrects them in surveys — and that’s exactly the hazard. When anger dissipates and myths endure, energy faces no pure constraint. In that vacuum, corruption doesn’t provoke collapse; it festers. When corruption festers, it causes important financial harm, erodes public religion in governing our bodies, exacerbates inequality and poverty, and may in the end result in an increase in political instability and social unrest. It creates pervasive, systemic points that negatively affect each side of society. 

What has grow to be the brand new revolution is stability — not as an finish in itself, however as the one platform from which justice can nonetheless be pursued with out burning the home down. – Rappler.com

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