by Diego Morra
For those still bent to be polite by acting as Loyal Opposition to the Marcos Jr. regime and refraining from demanding that both President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice President Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio resign to pave the way for the Filipino people to overhaul a bankrupt, graft-ridden political order, there is nothing unconstitutional or illegal in seeking redress of grievances, which is protected speech, and certainly it is most logical to extirpate the very system that sustains the crapulence of grafters. From Team Unity, the tandem has deteriorated to become Team Impunity, and both factions are guilty as hell of committing the worst plunder of the national wealth.
To argue otherwise is to wave the banner of lese majeste laws and allow Team Impunity to run roughshod over the Filipino people. The Marcos and Duterte factions are guilty of promoting impunity and there is no sense choosing one faction over the other. Both of them suffer from warped logic, with the Dutertes insisting on the necessity of the “war on drugs” to eliminate the drug menace in six months, and to turn the waters of Manila Bay red with the blood of criminals while the Marcos faction wrongly believes that it is, like Caesar’s wife, beyond reproach. The Dutertes promised to exterminate drug addiction nationwide in six months; it led to 27,000 deaths, according to the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), and the number of addicts actually increased. Change was coming? Scamming did come.
The scam stayed for six years while the Covid pandemic provided a cover for the plunder of the national treasury, first through the Pharmally pirates protected by the Dutertes and led by Michael Yang, and backed by now Senator Christopher Lawrence Tesoro Go (CLTG), a member of the family that owns CLTG Construction and Development Corp. The Duterte dynasty also profited from the P51-billion infrastructure budget for Davao City and Rep. Paolo Duterte claims all the projects were completed, done by crony contractors, the corporations owned by Bong Go’s father and half-brother and by the firms owned by the Discayas.
Now that Marcos Jr. is the helmsman of the ship of graft, he mistakenly thought that an anti-corruption campaign would provide him with a vehicle to run against those who stole trillions of pesos from flood control projects (FCPs.) The much-bruited State of the Nation Address (SONA) of July 28, 2025 became the initial salvo against graft and by assailing the gluttons of Congress, Marcos Jr. thought he could manage the fallout, but he underestimated the rage that he had fanned. For exposing the P1-trillion graft-ridden flood control scam, Marcos thinks he should be exempt from any accountability for the plunder of taxpayer money. Yet, he had signed the national budgets from 2023 to 2025, and all of these annual appropriation laws contained the financial bonanza for lawmakers, the top honchos of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the 15 top contractors of infrastructure projects.
Similarly, Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio is now essaying the role of an anti-corruption advocate but could not explain how she spent P125-million, ostensibly from the Contingent Fund of Malacanang, in the dying days of 2022 when she was still operating on the budget left behind by then Vice President Leni Robredo million. She hasn’t explained why billions of pesos in expenditures at the Department of Education (DepEd) under her watch were disallowed. Sara literally swims in the financial cesspool; the bad habit is in the DNA of the Duterte dynasty.
Indeed, despite their overt hatred for each other, the Marcos and Duterte factions are two sides of the same coin and both of them thrive because they controlled all the levers of political and economic power and maintained hegemony over the state’s repressive apparatuses. The Dutertes mangled the budget from 2016 to 2022, doubled the national debt, transformed Manila Bay into fiefdoms for plutocrats like the Henry Sy family, Ramon S. Ang, favored Davao City contractors, moneymaking political dynasties and subalterns of the Chinese state that have sneaked into the power generation and distribution industries.
Yet, there are other characters in the Marcos Jr. regime that have created the myth that the underdeveloped country’s workers should be glad that their families can still enjoy noche buena at a terrifically low P500. The P500 noche buena spiel spurred the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) to denounce duet of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and Marcos Jr. spokesperson Claire Castro, saying that the government is insulting workers who can hardly make both ends meet with their depreciated minimum wage. There is nothing grand in the claim of a joyous feast that costs less than $10 since it only reminds workers that they must accept the pittance and stop changing things they cannot accept, like the minimum wage far below the P1,200 needed to live decently.
“Insulto ito sa mga manggagawa. Habang pinagbabaluktot sila para magkasya sa kumot, nagtatampisaw sa nakaw na buwis ng taumbayan ang mga kurakot – si Bongbong Marcos, Sara Duterte, mga senador, kongresista, matataas na opisyal sa gubyerno, at kanilang mga kasabwat na private contractors. Tayong mga manggagawa, kawani, empleyado, at ordinaryong Pipipino ang nagpapakahirap magtrabaho, magbanat ng buto araw-araw. Huwag tayong pumayag na puro insulto at pagpapahirap ang nararanasan natin,” protested KMU chairperson Jerome Adonis. Like other organizations joining the Nov. 30, 2025 rally at Luneta, KMU joins the call for the entirely unacceptable system promoted, protected and worsened by Team Impunity of the Marcos and Duterte factions to be swept away since it thrives on oppressing workers and peasants and stealing the national wealth for the benefit of political dynasties and the plutocrats.
