by Diego Morra
After Cardinal Pablo Virgilio “Ambo” David criticized those who came in droves for the “Baha sa Luneta” anti-corruption rally on Nov. 30, 2025 and found it offensive that some groups were demanding that all government officials resign, it is apropos for the good prelate to remember a line from the poem entitled “The Fair Nun, A Tale” written by Elijah Fenton in 1712– “Well! more ways may be found than one, To kill a Witch that Will not drown.”
Certainly, there are many ways of confronting corruption—the witch that will not drown—and no prelate can speak ex cathedra that those who espouse militant action to seek the arrest, prosecution and eventual conviction of the cohorts of the “witch” are wrong. Neither is it appropriate to suspect that the various organizations that were harassed before they could assemble in Luneta were plotting to bring down the Marcos Jr. regime.
No one called for the violent overthrow of the regime except those who are plotting to unseat Marcos Jr. and crown Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio as the queen of Malacanang. It is like saying oil and water mix. The road to Damascus is different from the road to Samarra where the angel of death awaits. Think of the current battle as treading the road to Emmaus. Religious leaders are not supposed to be wet behind the ears, or susceptible to being swayed by the belief that protest actions should not disrupt the political order. Sa madaling salita, hindi dapat guluhin ang tabakuhan, as some columnists have championed.
No window will be shaken and no wall will not be rattled as their mission isn’t synonymous with the times that the Filipino people want changed. What the larger campaign to demand that graft be obliterated and the corrupt elements in the two legislative chambers get their just desserts represents is a broad front of organizations that want the “witch that will not drown” to finally be deep-sixed. The good Cardinal apparently misconstrued the Sept. 21 rally at the Luneta and the Nov. 30 action at the same venue as a Pinoy version of the 1933 Dortmund Sturmabteilung mass action.
Far from it, as the Kilusang Bayan Kontra Kurakot (KBKK) declared, since the organizer of the “Baha sa Luneta” rally, along with scores of mass actions in major urban centers nationwide, including those in the Davao City fiefdom of the Duterte political dynasty, was firm in pushing the call “Lahat ng sangkot, dapat managot,” “Ikulong ang mga kurakot,” at “Marcos, Duterte, panagutin.” Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos joined the Luneta rallies of Sept. 21 and Nov. 30. Thousands of them also proceeded to Mendiola and EDSA on Sept. 21 to show their solidarity with the various organizations demanding justice and restitution from the unabashed plunder of the people’s money in ghost, substandard and dubious flood control projects. No need to mock those who expressed their solidarity with the EDSA participants.
The seven concrete demands against the corrupt regime are as clear as day. Even the temporarily blinded St. Paul could certainly read them. Nothing in those demands is aligned with the feared “civil-military junta” being organized on the sly to push the still-born presidency of Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio, who continues to wait for Marcos Jr. to hand power to her on a silver platter. For the Makabayan Bloc, this charge is a most unkind cut. Without the Makabayan lawmakers who did the yeoman’s job of collecting records, documents and counterchecking the mismanaged accounts of Duterte Jr., the inquiry into the financial shananigans of Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio would not have gained traction.
KBKK also clarified that the call for a “transition council” is not part of its agenda even as some groups have called for its formation. The organizers respected their demand and it is not even necessary for its “nihil obstat” to be affixed to banners and streamers that the participants are free to unfurl. Think of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend, as the Chinese proverb says. If the organizers were to censor the slogans not to their liking, it would certainly defeat the purpose of broadening and deepening the any-corruption campaign.
This “transition council,” if we were to argue, is a mile removed from the “revolutionary government” or military junta that retired and pro-Sara generals have been taking an eternity to organize. It is a democratic option that encourages the representation of political forces, the working class, employees in the public and private sectors, and all other social sectors that have suffered from the plunder of the national wealth. The good Cardinal Ambo should remember, as St. Paul instructed in Romans 16:16, to “Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you.” The national community should forge ahead in exterminating corruption, which worsens the already dire straits of the Filipino people, and let the streams of protest surge and push down to the bottom “the witch that will not drown.”
