2025 State of the Nation: Marcos Singilin! Duterte Panagutin! Sara Litisin!
July 28 marks Marcos Jr.’s 4th state of the nation address after the fraudulent 2022 elections. Marcos has a penchant for bending facts and figures, but the reality for everyday Filipinos speaks for itself:
50% or 14.1 million families reported experiencing poverty as of April 2025,
hunger rates have doubled since 2022 to 27.2% or 7.5 million families by March 2025,
while 2.1 million are unemployed and millions more underemployed.
Instead of addressing the basic problems faced by Filipinos, Marcos has instead opted to sell-out the country and its resources for his own gains. Just last week, as the country was being ravaged by another typhoon, Marcos met with fascist US president Donald Trump to negotiate the worst possible deal – leaving with a 2% tariff rate increase from 17% to 19%. BBM and his team are so desperate to spin his embarrassing results, but there is no sugarcoating this – it was a bad deal and Marcos should be ashamed.
Not only did BBM negotiate for more economic subservience, he also recommitted to the sham “ironclad” military alliance between the US and the Philippines during his meetings with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. On top of the EDCA sites, BBM has invited the US to build a navy ship repair facility in Palawan as well as a US-funded ammunition factory. These deals have effectively cemented the Philippines as the US’ war factory in the Asia-Pacific, giving way for resource extraction, manufacturing, storage, and ultimately a launching pad for these weapons.
In order to more easily facilitate the plunder and sellout, Marcos has clamped down on fascist attacks on the people. BBM has rebranded his US-inspired counterinsurgency program to the “National Action Plan for Unity, Peace, and Development”, spearheaded by the notorious National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). BBM fakes this desire for peace while committing rampant human rights violations against the Filipino people, activists, and human rights advocates from the cities and especially in the countryside where de facto martial law exists.
This disregard for our people is seen in the calculated line that BBM is towing when it comes to the plight of Filipino migrants in the US. BBM could not muster any ounce of courage in defense of our people against Trump’s fascist attacks because he does not want to jeopardize the flow of military aid to the Philippines by the US government, funded by our US tax dollars.
BBM’s human rights record from July 2022 - June 2025 according to Karapatan
129 extrajudicial killings
1,014 drug war killings
288 illegal or arbitrary arrest
67,024 indiscriminate firing
45,097 forced evacuation
15 enforced disappearance
571 forced or fake surrender
51,206 indiscriminate bombings
10,225,414 threats, harassment
On the other hand, BBM’s vice president Sara Duterte is making maneuvers that Marcos could only dream of. After Sara was impeached in February, she went full force to try and block the impeachment trial from happening. So far, she has secured more senatorial seats and the backing of the Supreme Court who barred the trial from starting. Sara’s been skilled at exploiting the country’s thin fabric of democracy to her advantage – one of the very reasons she was impeached in the first place.
The Dutertes have been busy with Rodrigo also trying to persuade the International Criminal Court (ICC) to allow him to be released from jail and be held in a different country while awaiting trial. Let us be clear: Rodrigo deserves to languish in jail for his crimes against humanity, and any effort to relieve him of any of that accountability is an insult to our people.
In three years, BBM has shown himself to be a useless, weak, and truly bad president whose principal goal is to sell out the Philippines for his own gains, to line the pockets of his cronies and shore up his political dynasty. BBM has proven himself to be a spineless doormat to any foreign interest while making empty proclamations of progress and service to the people.
In three years, BBM has ushered in a new era of fascism, a new era of economic crisis, and a new era of foreign subservience.
In those three years, the people have continued to resist. The overall global situation is causing much strife, and people are looking for alternatives.
