[Rear View] Punch drunk but still optimistic? Cue ‘I Will Survive’

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has managed to survive 2025. Battered, bruised, and visibly tired but still standing. He probably wakes up every morning feeling punch drunk. He’s still able to deal with intrigues, brickbats, destabilization attempts, and the other demands of the presidency on a daily basis while looking happy in front of the camera. Tired, but happy.  

Online pundits and analysts have attributed his survival to a confluence of events and personalities. To put it plainly, he is just lucky. 

Lucky that the constitutional successor is considered unfit for the job, not to mention pro-China. Lucky that the public has grown tired of coups and demos to unseat an elected president. Lucky that the organized opposition forces are bickering. At this point, there is really nothing much he can hold on to. 

Luck, however, is not a strategy for survival. It’s like wishing for rain and getting soaked in a turd storm of your own making. The President needs to get things moving in the direction he wants to take the country. 

But where exactly?

The incoming year will be even more challenging if he continues to focus all his energies on reclaiming the moral high ground on corruption, a lose-lose proposition.

For one, 2026 will mark the 40th anniversary of the February 1986 EDSA Revolution. Critics will conveniently use this event to remind the public of the Marcos family’s tarnished record on human rights and corruption. It could even provide a rallying point for warring opposition forces, an opportunity to retract their fangs and hold hands on EDSA, even just for this event.  

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The President and his advisers have probably anticipated such a scenario. This would explain his unexpected embrace of the liberal progressive’s legislative agenda, a move that could further drive a wedge between the militant and centrist wings of the opposition (Initially welcomed, several progressive leaders have now called the move half-hearted and insincere). 

He needs to be seen as decisive in dealing with the reported involvement of family members, aides, and former Cabinet officials in budget insertions and corruption. This has been the weak point of his crusade. While the President exudes certainty and control each time he updates the public via social media on the status of his anti-corruption crusade, his spokespersons have been vague, or plain evasive, when asked about links between contractors and the Palace.

Sara, prices and jobs

Then there’s Vice President Sara Duterte. 

The corruption scandal gave the Vice President the room to consolidate political support. A pre-election survey conducted by the polling firm WR Numero gave Duterte the top slot (33.3%) among possible presidential candidates in 2028. 

A Duterte 2.0 presidency will be bad for the country and disastrous for the President and his family. Concerted efforts should now shift to shining the harsh light of public scrutiny on the Vice President. Recent revelations of alleged offshore gaming and drug money funneled to the Vice President and the filing of a plunder complaint against her before a reinvigorated Ombudsman could signal the start of the offensive.

With public focus and pressure shifting to the courts by next year, the President can change the national conversation and refocus on the issues that matter most to ordinary Filipinos: prices and jobs.

In recent surveys, corruption rose in the hierarchy of concerns because the President himself has chosen to bring it to the public’s attention. For this, he got a failing grade. Prices and jobs remain the top concerns, but his approval ratings, or how the public grades his efforts to address these two concerns, also dropped significantly. He must show that he can also be as swift and decisive in addressing the issues of jobs and prices. 

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During the annual Christmas party of the Malacañang press corps, the President, in his remarks, used the words “pain,” “difficulty,” and “anguish” to describe what the nation is going through in the aftermath of his revelations of large-scale corruption in flood control projects. Still, these words might as well describe what he is going through, and will go through, perhaps with greater intensity, in the coming year.

Mired in a controversy he created, the President, for now, is not surging forward but running in place. Still, he remains optimistic about his future.  As he told Palace reporters, his administration knows what to do. 

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

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