ON Nov. 30, another wave of indignation is set to sweep across the archipelago. This is no ordinary protest, but a multisectoral convergence grandly baptized as the “Trillion Peso March,” named after the staggering fund transfer of people’s money to the pockets of thieves. The figure may be hyperbolic, but so is the scale of the corruption.

The organizers, an unlikely constellation of civil-society groups, clergy, leftist blocs, student alliances and the ghostly remnants of post-Marcos 1 crusaders, are attempting what passes as national unity: getting everyone equally furious at the same crooks at the same time.

This show of collective disgust comes on the heels of the now-infamous aborted INC three-day rally fiasco of Nov. 16 to 18. What was supposed to be a pristine, apolitical prayer gathering mutated into a partisan circus once overeager allies injected calls for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to resign — punctuated by Sen. Imee Marcos’ tell-all on her brother’s propensity to get high on coke — calling “Ading Bonget” an addict. Nice show of filial devotion. “Ka Eddie Boy” and the INC leadership, usually masters at crowd choreography, found themselves outmaneuvered. The Duterte-aligned troops — forever on the lookout for a vacancy at the top — seized the moment, beating their drums for Vice President Sara Duterte to swoop in as the savior-in-waiting. Unity, as always, died on arrival.

Reclaiming the narrative

This coming mobilization attempts a hard reset. Its mission: to drag the corruption scandals back to center stage, strip the euphemisms, and name the culprits with the clarity of a medical autopsy. Gone are the polite calls for “reform” and “transparency.” In their place demands to hold specific individuals accountable, to shame an Ombudsman widely caricatured as a Marcos loyalist, and to pressure the criminal justice system into actually moving — preferably forward. This is not activism for the faint-hearted; it is a civic intervention for a government that appears to have overdosed on its own impunity.

The shameless perpetrators

By now, even the mildly attentive can recite the cast of characters in this sprawling corruption saga. The two chambers of Congress — ever united when the loot is large enough — have conspired with favored contractors (the Discaya network being only the best-known specimen) and key bureaucrats inside the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). Secretaries, undersecretaries, district engineers — an entire assembly line of rent-seekers — perfected the formula: inflate the budget by dubious “insertions,” skim from the contracts, parading their “kabits” with the spoils on Facebook.

And as every whistleblower reminds us, this is just the tip of the iceberg, which implies the unseen remainder is large enough to sink a country, not just a ship.

The recent resignations of Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin — the “Little President” — and Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman, guardian of the national purse, have only deepened suspicions. Their exit raises the question no one wants to ask aloud: Was the president merely negligent, or was he complicit? Detractors insist he lacks the cognitive wattage to mastermind a racket of this scale; skeptics counter that stupidity has never been a reliable defense in organized crime.

Which leads us to former House speaker Martin Romualdez, his congressional lieutenants like Zaldy Co, and a cabal whose members scuttle around inside the bicam like gnomes guarding the national ATM.

The great unraveling

As in every mafiosi drama, the syndicate is now eating itself alive. Legislators, contractors and bureaucrats are elbowing one another for a slot in the witness protection program, eager to secure the coveted status of “least guilty.” Some hope for lighter sentences; others dream of keeping part of their loot, because in the Philippines, even repentance comes with a negotiation.

The Trillion Peso March is thus not just a protest — it is a reckoning. A reminder that even in a country desensitized by scandal, there comes a point when the public finally says: Enough. Return what you stole — or the streets will collect it for you.

Where do we go from here

I remain skeptical that the Trillion Peso March — grand in name, righteous in intention — will deliver what our wounded nation now demands: genuine accountability and transparency, the resignation and removal of top officials implicated in wholesale corruption, and the swift, nonselective prosecution of bureaucrats, cabinet secretaries, senators and congressmen who helped engineer our national decay. At its heart, this movement seeks nothing less than a reform of governance itself. Yet the skepticism is warranted. We have marched before. We have demanded before. And the system, hydra-like, grows back with new heads and the same putrid smell.

Our political polarization complicates the picture further. One bloc cries, “BBM resign!” — an appeal drowned out by the specter of constitutional succession: the ascent of Vice President Duterte. This sector recoils at the idea, wary of inheriting the political DNA of a father whose Pharmally scandal remains one of the darkest emblems of pandemic plunder. The vice president herself has yet to fully answer for the alleged misuse of her confidential funds during her stint as education secretary. When the guardians of the public purse cannot account for the coins in their own pockets, one wonders what kind of succession we are really talking about.

A quandary

The uncomfortable truth is that a Ferdinand Marcos Jr. resignation and a Sara Duterte assumption would not heal the Republic’s long-festering wounds. The rot is systemic — embedded in the architecture of our politics, nourished by political dynasties, shielded by impunity, and enabled by a bureaucracy that has learned to survive not by serving the public, but by serving the powerful. Replacing the figure at the top is cosmetic; it is a haircut for a patient who needs organ transplant. How do we deal with the senators, congressmen and career bureaucrats who constitute the machinery of decay? Histrionic top billing changes will not purge a culture entrenched across generations.

The ghosts of our revolution

As the organizers of the Trillion Peso March attempt to mobilize a fractured populace, a parallel conversation simmers quietly in the streets. It is whispered more in longing than in strategy: the possibility — however remote — of a military component emerging, as happened twice in our modern history. EDSA 1 swept away a corrupt dictatorship but replaced it with a flawed democracy that enshrined political dynasties and partnered with oligarchs protected by the 1987 Constitution. EDSA 2 toppled another corrupt regime only to install a successor later jailed for plunder and ultimately freed. Both uprisings promised deliverance; both reproduced the traditional politics that continue to maim our institutions.

Today, many Filipinos — exhausted, disgusted, politically homeless — find themselves hoping, perhaps naively, for a deus ex machina: an intervention outside the narrow binary of the president and vice president, the two figures perched atop our totem pole of corruption. It is a yearning born of desperation rather than ideology, an appeal to forces unseen because the forces seen have failed us so completely.

Where we go from here remains unclear. Yet one truth stands firm: protests, resignations and successions are hollow unless the architecture of impunity — every beam, bolt, and shadow — is dismantled, redesigned and rebuilt. Without that, we merely pace our own cage. We need alternatives — real ones.

The Senate President crowed yesterday that the party he nominally coheads, PDP-Laban, has a “pleasant problem” — too many potential senatorial candidates. Koko Pimentel’s estimate is they have up to 20 possible choices for the 12-person slate for the 2019 senatorial race. But his list includes the five administration-affiliated senatorial incumbents up for reelection next year. This is a group that has made noises that, much as it prefers to remain in the administration camp, it is unhappy with the way PDP-Laban has been designating its local leaders and candidates, and therefore prefers to strike out on its own, perhaps in alliance with the other administration (regional) party, Hugpong ng Pagbabago, headed by the President’s daughter and current Davao City mayor, Sara Duterte.

Setting aside, then, the five-person “Force,” the administration-oriented but not PDP-friendly reelectionists (Nancy Binay, Sonny Angara, Cynthia Villar, Grace Poe, and JV Ejercito), what Koko’s crowing over is a mixed bag. Some of them have been floated by Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez (with whom Mayor Duterte clashed in recent months): six representatives (Gloria Macapagal Arroyo who is in her last term in the House of Representatives; Albee Benitez, Karlo Nograles, Rey Umali, Geraldine Roman, and Zajid Mangudadatu), three Cabinet members (Bong Go, Harry Roque, and Francis Tolentino), and two other officials (Mocha Uson and Ronald dela Rosa), which still only adds up to 11 possible candidates (who are the missing three?).

Of all of these, the “Force” reelectionists are only fair-weather allies of the present dispensation; their setting themselves apart is about much more than the mess PDP-Laban made in, say, San Juan where support for the Zamoras makes it extremely unattractive for JV Ejercito to consider being in the same slate. Their cohesion is about thinking ahead: Creating the nucleus for the main coalition to beat in the 2022 presidential election. The contingent of congressmen and congresswomen who could become candidates for the Senate, however, seems more a means to kick the Speaker’s rivals upstairs (at least in the case of Benitez and Arroyo) and pad the candidates’ list with token but sacrificial candidates, a similar situation to the executive officials being mentioned as possible candidates (of the executive officials, only Go seems viable, but making him run would deprive the President of the man who actually runs the executive department, and would be a clear signal that the administration is shifting to a post-term protection attitude instead of the more ambitious system-change mode it’s been on, so far).

Vice President Leni Robredo has been more circumspect, saying she’s not sure the Liberal Party can even muster a full slate. The party chair, Kiko Pangilinan, denied that a list circulating online (incumbent Bam Aquino, former senators Mar Roxas, Jun Magsaysay, TG Guingona, current and former representatives Jose Christopher Belmonte, Kaka Bag-ao, Edcel Lagman, Raul Daza, Gary Alejano and Erin Tañada, former governor Eddie Panlilio and Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña) had any basis in fact.

What both lists have in common is they could be surveys-on-the-cheap, trial balloons to get the public pulse. Until the 17th Congress reconvenes briefly from May 14 to June 1 for the tail end of its second regular session (only to adjourn sine die until the third regular session begins on July 23), it has nothing much to do. Except, that is, for the barangay elections in May, after a last-ditch effort by the House to postpone them yet again to October failed.

Names can be floated but the real signal will come in July, when the President mounts the rostrum and calls for the big push for a new constitution—or not. Connected to this would be whether the Supreme Court disposes of its own chief, which would spare the Senate—and thus, free up the legislative calendar—to consider Charter change instead of an impeachment trial. In the meantime, what congressmen do seem abuzz over is an unrefusable invitation to the Palace tomorrow — to mark Arroyo’s birthday. An event possibly pregnant with meaning.

Here’s a striking statement about love shared with me by an English college mentor. “Love knows no grammar. How it works can’t be measured by any parts or figures of speech. It goes beyond the literate and illiterate. The sad reality is that, even a fool who has got no philosophy is not spared of its harsh reality.” After almost three decades, I reminded him through a private message of his words. Here’s what he said. “Thank you, Jord. This statement about love is searing to the heart. And, yes, fools do fall for it too. But I thought that we as well speak of the beauty that it gives and not so much focus on the harsh realities. After all, our country has had enough of the negativities.” Thank you, dearest Sir Eugene.

In these decisive times when our nation trembles under the weight of corruption, inequality, and disillusionment, it is you―the youth, burning with idealism, courage, and an unyielding sense of right―who must stand at the forefront of CHANGE. The future of the Philippines hangs in the balance, calling not for silence or apathy, but for unity, conviction, and action. Let your dreams be the spark that ignites renewal; let your voices thunder against injustice; let your hands build the nation our forebears envisioned but never fulfilled. Now is the hour to awaken, to rise, and to lead the march toward a just and transformed Philippines.

Remember, the pages of our history resound with the triumphs of youth who dared to dream and act. From the Propagandists who wielded the pen against tyranny to the Katipuneros who took up arms for freedom, it was always the young who ignited revolutions and rebuilt nations. As Dr. Jose Rizal declared, “The youth is the hope of our motherland,” but that hope is not a gift to be passively claimed; it is a duty to be earned through courage and purpose.

Today’s generation must transform awareness into action―to confront corruption with integrity, to challenge inequality with empathy, and to counter apathy with participation. The time for mere commentary has passed. What the nation demands now is commitment, creativity, and collective resolve. When the youth stand united in conscience and conviction, no obstacle is insurmountable, no reform impossible. The power to redeem the nation’s promise lies not in the hands of the few, but in the awakened spirit of the many. Rise, therefore, as one generation with one objective―to forge a Philippines worthy of its people’s deepest hopes. And to those who were once the torchbearers of youth but have since laid down their fire―hear this call.

The nation does not forget its veterans of hope, those who once believed that change was possible but have since grown weary in the long twilight of disappointment. Thus far history grants no sanctuary to resignation. It demands of every generation the same unrelenting duty―to defend what is right, to confront what is wrong, and to labor still for what remains unfinished.

Now is the moment to rise again. Let not caution disguise itself as wisdom, nor comfort as peace. The courage that once stirred your youth still flickers within; rekindle it, and let it burn anew for the sake of those who follow. Your experience, tempered by time, must now join hands with the fervor of the young - to guide, to mentor, to strengthen.

Together, let the wisdom of the seasoned and the passion of the rising coalesce into a single, indomitable force for renewal. For the task of nation-building is not bound by age, but by conviction. The call of the motherland resounds to all who still believe that the story of the Filipino is not yet complete―and that redemption, though delayed, is still within our grasp if only we choose to act once more. And to those whose hands have long gripped the levers of power―hardened by privilege, dulled by entitlement―hear this with clarity: the era of self-preservation must yield to the dawn of selfless service.

The nation can no longer afford leaders who mistake possession for stewardship, nor governance for dominion. The time has come to relinquish the throne of complacency and make way for the custodians of vision, courage, and renewal.

To step aside is not to surrender, but to honor the sacred rhythm of nationhood―to allow new voices, new hearts, and new minds to breathe life into institutions that have grown stale from neglect. True leadership is an act of stewardship, and stewardship demands humility―to know when to lead, and when to pass the torch. Those who have ruled long enough must now become mentors, not masters; guides, not gatekeepers.

To the youth who will inherit this burden and blessing alike, the call is equally profound. Lead not with arrogance, but with awareness; not with impulse, but with integrity. Let optimism be your discipline―a conscious act of faith in the nation’s capacity to rise again. Lead with inclusivity that unites rather than divides, with courage that reforms rather than destroys, and with resilience that endures when hope seems frail.

For the measure of a new generation’s greatness lies not in its defiance alone, but in its wisdom to build where others have failed. Let your leadership become the living testament that the Philippines, once disillusioned, has learned at last to believe again―through you.

Now, the Filipino youth stand at a defining crossroad of history. The echoes of the past and the murmurs of the future converge upon this moment, and in your hands rests the fragile, however formidable promise of a nation reborn. You are the inheritors of unfinished dreams and the architects of what is yet to be. United in thought and deed, strengthened by the wisdom of history and the fire of conviction, you possess the power to shape a Philippines anchored in justice, animated by democracy, and sustained by the collective flourishing of its people.

The mantle of responsibility has passed to you. Do not falter beneath its weight; bear it with courage, for it is through your resolve that the nation will rise from the ruins of complacency. Let your unity transcend boundaries of region, class, and creed. Let your integrity redefine leadership, and your compassion restore faith in the Filipino spirit.

This is your hour. Let this narrative be not merely a call to awaken, but a solemn commitment―to the country that nurtures you, to the people who believe in you, and to the generations who will follow your example. Stand firm, for you are the heartbeat of a nation yearning to live with dignity once more. Speak right and shine!

Rise, Filipino youth, and let history remember that when your time came ―you stood unwavering, and the nation moved forward.