I have spent a good part of my professional life in political communication — crafting messages, reading audiences, and studying how moments like last Monday’s are built. So let me say this upfront, because critics who refuse to concede anything convince no one: the fifth SONA was, in places, genuinely well-crafted political communication. The question that matters is whether craft is the same thing as governance. It is not, and the evidence was sitting — or rather, not sitting — right there in the session hall.
Start with the room, not the speech
Before a single word was delivered, the Batasang Pambansa had already given its own address — though not the one the wide shots suggested. The hall itself was full, even festive: hundreds of congressmen, the Cabinet out in force, spouses in ternos and barongs, applause arriving on cue. This was no boycotted event. Which is precisely why the specific seats that stayed empty carried so much weight. More than half of the 24 senators were absent. On the majority side, Tito Sotto and Ping Lacson begged off for medical reasons — Sotto said he was down with bad colds and on IV medication — while Bam Aquino also skipped. Of the 11-member minority, only Camille Villar showed up. The rest stayed away, and some could not have attended even if they had wanted to: Rodante Marcoleta and Jinggoy Estrada are detained on plunder charges, while Bato dela Rosa remains in hiding under an ICC arrest warrant. And the Vice President, speaking to supporters in The Hague, said she would not “waste” her time watching.
I have sat in the Batasang gallery for a SONA only once, but I have watched most of them over the years — closely enough to know that attendance is a political instrument. Legislators vote with their calendars long before they vote on the floor. A packed House applauding a President it already belongs to tells us little. And let us take the medical excuses entirely at face value — colds are colds, and I wish the senators well. The picture that remains is still extraordinary: a Senate where the minority is either boycotting, detained, or on the run; where ten of eleven minority seats sat empty; and where even the majority’s row was thin. When absence comes in that many forms at once — protest, illness, jail, and flight — that is no longer a “fragmented landscape.” That is a coalition problem for the administration’s remaining two years, and in the case of the jailed and fugitive senators, a rupture far deeper than any snub. No volume of applause from the seats that were filled can drown out the specific ones that were empty.
That is the frame I suggest we hold on to as we go through what the President actually said.
The Romualdez moment: the wrong question and the right one
The emotional centerpiece was unmistakable. On the flood control scandal, with the Ombudsman moving to file cases against his own cousin, former Speaker Martin Romualdez, the President declared:
“Masakit man sa akin ito, ngunit kailangan natin gawin ang tama. Hindi ako Pangulo ng aking pamilya, hindi ako pangulo ng aking kaibigan. Ako ay Pangulo ng Pilipinas at ang tungkulin ko ay sa inyo, ang aking mga kapwa Pilipino.”
The delivery cracked. The eyes welled. And within minutes, commentary split into two camps: those moved by a president choosing country over clan, and those who saw rehearsed sentimentality.
I want to suggest that both camps are asking the wrong question. Whether the tears were real is unknowable and, frankly, irrelevant. I have spent enough years in this trade to know that genuine emotion and strategic timing are not mutually exclusive; the best moments in political communication are usually both. As a piece of speechcraft, the anti-dynastic line was excellent — whoever wrote it understood exactly what the moment demanded.
The right question is the one that survives contact with events: what happens next? Accountability is not measured in choked voices. It is measured in informations filed, arraignments held, assets recovered, and convictions secured. The President has now staked his legacy, on national television, on doing “ang tama” to his own family. That is a check he wrote to 110 million witnesses. Our job is not to grade the performance. Our job is to make sure the check clears.
Concede the numbers — then do the math
The administration’s defenders will point out, correctly, that the speech opened with substance: cases filed against contractors, DPWH officials, and lawmakers over the flood control anomalies. The President reported that over ₱800 million out of an estimated ₱20 billion in ill-gotten assets has been returned to the treasury.
Let us grant the number. Then let us do the arithmetic the speech did not: ₱800 million of ₱20 billion is four percent. After a year of sweeping investigations, raids, freeze orders, and one of the most dramatic anti-corruption crackdowns in recent memory, the state has recovered four centavos of every peso stolen. I do not need adjectives to make that point. The number indicts more efficiently than any columnist can.
EPIRA: the right target — now show me the bill
I will part ways here with some of my fellow critics. The call to amend EPIRA is not, in my view, populist theater. Anyone who has looked seriously at Philippine power rates over the last two decades knows the law is overdue for surgery, and demands for amendment have come from across the ideological spectrum. Dismissing the proposal as applause-bait puts critics in the strange position of defending the status quo on electricity prices — a hill I am not willing to die on.
The legitimate critique is different: a standing ovation is not a legislative strategy. Where is the certified bill? What is the timeline? And here the empty seats come back to haunt the speech — because with half the Senate absent and key blocs estranged, who exactly will carry this amendment through a chamber the President can no longer reliably count?
The West Philippine Sea and Pax Silica: applause lines with unfinished sentences
On the West Philippine Sea, the declarations were firm and the ovation was earned. But rhetoric has been our most consistent deliverable in those waters. The speech offered resolve; it did not offer a strategy visibly different from the one under which incursions have continued.
On the Pax Silica Industrial Hub, the President painted a 1,620-hectare, AI-anchored vision in New Clark City — quality jobs, advanced manufacturing, a seat in the global technology value chain. The ambition is real, and I understand its appeal; a country that has struggled to industrialize cannot sit out the reorganization of global production around AI and semiconductors. But the speech acknowledged the project’s potential while saying nothing about its criticisms — the enormous water and energy demands, the displacement fears of local communities, the sovereignty questions raised by a US-led initiative. Fifteen thousand people marched along Commonwealth Avenue during the address, and Pax Silica was among their loudest grievances. A vision that cannot survive a paragraph of engagement with its own opposition is not yet a plan. It is a rendering.
The state of the nation was in the gallery
So: roadmap or mask? My honest answer is that it was a well-produced speech delivered to a full and appreciative house — minus, conspicuously, half the Senate, the minority blocs, and the Vice President. The applause was real. So were the absences. And the pattern of who filled the room versus who stayed away is the more reliable document.
A SONA is ultimately an exercise in narrative management — I say that without cynicism, because narrative management is a legitimate function of the presidency and I have practiced the trade myself. But narrative works only when the audience shows up. The President’s words asked us to believe in a government pulling together for a final two-year push. The seats told us that significant portions of that government have already left the coalition, physically and politically.
The performance deserves a fair review, and I have tried to give one. But the test of this SONA was never Monday afternoon. It is whether the Romualdez cases proceed, whether the recovery rate climbs past four percent, whether an EPIRA bill actually moves, and whether Pax Silica gets the public scrutiny it has so far been spared. Applause fades in ninety minutes. Follow-through takes two years — and that clock is now running.
Email: nicgabjr@gmail.com X: @nicgabunada.com
