New Year, New Me, and the Refusal to Forget

The calendar turns, and with it comes the familiar whisper: new year, new me. A promise of reinvention, of release, of beginning again.

It is true that new beginnings are not always magical. More often, they are uneasy, burdened by unresolved realities that refuse to be reset by a change in date. Because beneath the fireworks and countdowns that came with the new year, lies a country still grappling with political fatigue and unresolved injustices. 

Renewal, after all, is not just about surviving what came before, it is about answering for it. But in a country trained to confuse forgetting with healing, the calendar becomes a convenient alibi. We are urged to look ahead even as the damage remains unaddressed, the questions unanswered, and the names unnamed. Somewhere between the noise and the silence that follows, accountability slips away—quietly, leaving the public to carry the weight of what the state refuses to confront.

As 2026 begins and long after the floodwaters have receded, justice remains absent from the wreckage. In the wake of the massive flood control scandal—where billions of pesos earmarked for disaster mitigation were allegedly siphoned off through ghost projects and substandard infrastructure—the silence from the courts is deafening. Although some figures have faced consequences, like former Senator Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr. surrendering to authorities on an arrest warrant and has been detained in connection with a malversation case linked to a Pandi, Bulacan flood control project, other high‑ranking officials whose names surfaced in the controversy have only resigned from their government posts. Last November, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin and Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman stepped down after their offices were implicated in the ongoing investigation.

As we remain optimistic that high-ranking officials will be jailed for this corruption, it is important that we remain grounded in the fact that these powerful individuals are keenly invested in preserving the very systems that protect them from consequence. Their influence stretches across institutions meant to enforce accountability—through legal delays, political alliances, and a culture of impunity that rewards proximity to power. Hope, in this context, must be tempered with vigilance. Without sustained public pressure, independent journalism, and collective memory, the promise of justice risks becoming yet another casualty—quietly deferred, procedurally buried, and eventually forgotten in the noise of the next crisis.

Yet the danger goes beyond delayed justice or elites who walk free, it creeps into the rhythm of our daily life. When consequences are postponed again and again, corruption stops being shocking and starts to feel normal—a permanent aspect of public life that citizens learn to tolerate. Outrage fades, urgency erodes, and the public begins to expect continuity rather than change. In this climate, even the language of reform loses its edge, and the promises of progress become empty echoes, only becoming rehearsed slogans that do not even threaten the powerful, leaving the system fundamentally unchanged.

No matter how many times—or how many years—we say “new year, new me,” we wake up in the same political weather, under an administration that speaks fluently of renewal—unity, discipline, economic recovery—while everyday life remains stubbornly unchanged. We continue to live under a government that speaks of reform and promises transformation, yet remains firmly anchored to the policies and power structures of the past.

The irony reached its peak when not long after the largest corruption scandal rocked his administration, President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. sat at his desk in Malacañang to sign the P6.793 trillion national budget for the year. In a ceremony marked by a defensive posture, he penned his signature onto the largest spending plan in Philippine history—a document he branded as a "people-centered" roadmap for a "Bagong Pilipinas."

To sign a record-breaking budget in the shadow of a massive breach of public trust is a precarious act of political theater. It requires a specific kind of audacity to ask for a "new beginning" while the stench of the Flood Control Scandal—a crisis that unmasked billions in allegedly diverted funds and ghost projects—still clings to the corridors of power. By authorizing trillions more under the very same structures that allowed such leakages to flourish, the administration isn't just asking for a fresh start; it is asking for a collective amnesia.

How can we begin again when the same structures of power continue to exhaust and oppress us? 

That exhaustion is not abstract. It takes form in who is allowed to speak, and who is taught—quietly, systematically—to stay silent. The transition into 2026 has not brought a reprieve from the red-tagging, surveillance, and administrative meddling that characterized the previous year, in fact, it continued on and persevered as the "new year" facade cracked further when Jacob Baluyot, National Chairperson of the Alyansa ng Kabataang Mamamahayag-PUP and Associate Editor of The Catalyst, was served a subpoena by the Department of Justice for alleged Sedition and Inciting to Sedition.

The timing is as pointed as the charges. Baluyot, who was already facing a petition for indirect contempt from November 2025, is being hauled into a preliminary investigation for simply fulfilling his role as a campus journalist during the anti-corruption protests on September 21. This illustrates what happens when the "new year" mentality is used as a bleach to wash away the stains of the previous one, treating systemic failures as mere calendar entries to be deleted.

This isn't an isolated event. It’s a pattern. It’s what happens when those in power decide that dissent is the same thing as disorder. When the state targets student journalists for doing their jobs, they are sending a warning: 'We are watching, and we decide what you’re allowed to say.' In these moments, the law isn't about justice anymore—it’s a weapon used to tire people out.

It’s a slow-motion kind of silencing. Every subpoena and every hurdle teaches the next person to be afraid. It forces the next generation of writers to weigh the truth against their own safety before they even pick up a pen. Fear doesn’t need to be everywhere to work; it just has to be a possibility. We can talk about 'progress' and 'new beginnings' all we want, but if the underlying system of intimidation hasn't changed, the calendar is just a cover for the same old tactics. Under these conditions, the promise of a "new year" feels like a hollow gesture, a fresh coat of paint on a machine of repression that is still humming along, right beneath the surface.

We like to treat the new year like a clean slate, a chance to breathe again and believe that things will finally be different. But there is a quiet cruelty in the way the sun rises on January 1st. A new calendar doesn't have the power to wash away the weight of everything we left unfinished, nor can it conjure up justice from a system that has spent years perfecting the art of looking the other way. We are told to embrace a "new beginning," but that promise feels thin when it crashes against the same old walls—laws built to protect the powerful, institutions that reward those who stay silent, and a world that feels smaller every time someone is watched, red-tagged, or silenced.

To truly start over isn't as simple as turning a page. It is the exhausting work of trying to build something new while standing in the wreckage of the old. It means facing a system that demands our faith in "progress" while its machinery of fear remains fully intact. We don’t need the hollow rhetoric of a fresh start; we need a world where we don’t have to be afraid of the truth we carried into the light last year, we remain as we are, and we remain refusing to forget.

Article: Gabrielle Cruz

Graphics: Althea Polancos