Authoritarian Nostalgia: Applauded

Marcos’ 2025 SONA reveals not a roadmap, but the specter of a manufactured legacy—haunted by ghosts in the machine of power, memory, and illusion.

It begins with applause. Over a hundred, in fact. A standing ovation, even, for a President whose surname is synonymous with plunder. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., halfway into his term, stood at a podium with polished words and practiced cadence, vowing to punish the corrupt and cleanse the bureaucracy. In that surreal moment—when lawmakers, political elites, and cameras rose to their feet—one could almost forget: this man is the son of the namesake dictator who normalized corruption in the Philippine psyche, whose regime institutionalized impunity and bled the nation dry.

A Marcos vowing to end corruption is not only ironic; it’s an insult to memory. “Mahiya naman kayo,” said Marcos Jr., addressing officials who allegedly conspired to steal from flood control funds. But what happens when the messenger becomes the message itself? 

His family still refuses to acknowledge the billions stolen during his father’s dictatorship. As of today, the Philippine government is still recovering ill-gotten wealth from the Marcos estate. The President’s moral authority to wage war against corruption collapses under the weight of his own lineage—a living paradox that encapsulates what scholar Ross Tapsell once called the “disinformation paradox”: a regime born of lies, now pretending to fight lies. Witnessing Marcos call out thieves of public funds is not just ironic, it’s insulting. It reduces accountability to theater. What should be a reckoning becomes a rebranding.

It’s clear now that Marcos Jr. isn’t leading a country—he’s leading a séance. Authoritarian nostalgia in full display. From the revival of Love Bus to Kadiwa stores and the echoes of Masagana 99, Marcos Jr. doesn’t seem to be leading a country, he’s reliving his father’s ghost. 

The 2025 SONA was less a vision of the future and more a curated scrapbook of a curated past. “Libre ang Love Bus,” he said, as though this symbolic resurrection could distract from decades of unfinished transport reform, failed jeepney modernization, and worsening commuter conditions. What’s troubling isn’t just the homage to his father’s dictatorship—it’s the public’s eerie comfort with it. That applause? It’s not for policy, it’s for nostalgia.

Marcos’ declaration that floods are the “new normal” and Filipinos must simply get used to it betrays a dangerous, defeatist logic: one that turns negligence into nature and failure into fate. Infrastructure corruption may be widespread, but presidential indifference is unforgivable. When he blames the rain and not the rotten system that failed to build sustainable defenses, he participates in the same gaslighting that praises Filipino “resilience” while ignoring systemic collapse.

Environmental decay was barely addressed. No mention of ancestral domains. No plan for reforestation. No clear stand on marine degradation in the West Philippine Sea. Just another promise of audits and another scapegoat for substandard work.

Climate reality is not a public relations inconvenience. It is the battlefield where lives, especially the poorest, are lost. Marcos’ approach? Shrug and smile. The flood is not and will never be a metaphor. 

Also, cheap rice makes for a great headline—but if farmland disappears under concrete, who will feed us tomorrow? Yes, Marcos claimed that his administration achieved the impossible: the ₱20-per-kilo rice. But here’s the catch: cheap rice means nothing if farmers are buried in debt, and agricultural lands are being devoured by real estate giants like Camella Homes. The President cannot claim to uplift farmers while refusing to address rampant land conversion that kills long-term food security at its root. You can’t plant crops on memories. You can’t eat a speech. Until agricultural lands are protected from corporate greed, until the Philippine government stops treating food security as a talking point, we will keep importing what we can grow, and blaming farmers for a system designed to exploit them.

What Marcos did not say in his SONA reveals more than what he did. There was no mention of Indigenous Peoples’ rights. No commitment to restart peace talks. No word on online gambling addiction, foreign interference in Philippine sovereignty, or the ICC investigations into Rodrigo Duterte. No update on protecting West Philippine Sea territory, just a tired line: “friend to all, enemy to none.”

When a President refuses to confront the hard truths, what he says becomes irrelevant. What he omits becomes the message. What wasn't said speaks louder, indeed.

Manufactured unity, manufactured consent? Well what does unity mean when the administration is fragmented, when the Vice President doesn’t even attend the SONA, and when protest effigies—ZomBBM, Sara-nanggal—burn on Commonwealth Avenue? Unity in this context is a demand for silence. It is unity around the idea that nothing can change. The Marcos regime does not want dialogue, it wants applause. As long as the ovation continues, so does the illusion.

The most dangerous part of Marcos’ SONA wasn’t what he said—it was how easily people clapped. When people forget, deception thrives. When a nation accepts irony as leadership, it begins to rot from within. There is nothing new in this "Bagong Pilipinas" if it is built on the blueprints of a buried dictatorship.

Perhaps that is the greatest tragedy of this administration: not that it lies—but that it knows the public might no longer care.

Article/Artikulo: Ariane Claire Galpao

Cartoon: Luke Perry Saycon