A Holiday Gathering, A Speech of Political Pain

The atmosphere in Malacañang Palace, typically one of holiday cordiality for the annual Christmas get-together with the Malacañang Press Corps, was unexpectedly charged. In a moment of striking candor, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. moved beyond traditional festive pleasantries to deliver a profound and unscripted message that offered a dramatic, conceptual defense of his administration’s tumultuous period. The speech was less a celebration of the present and more a stark acknowledgment of the national turbulence, which the President framed as the painful, yet necessary, precursor to systemic healing.

The central thesis of his extemporaneous address was the necessity of disruption. The President acknowledged the widespread public “anguish,” the political instability, and the feeling that the nation is currently “bleeding.” However, he quickly pivoted to assert that this hardship is not a sign of failure or confusion, but the inevitable consequence of a difficult, high-stakes process.

In powerful, visceral language, the President employed a medical metaphor that resonated deeply with the press corps: “We are trying precisely to change the entire system, and when you have to excise a cancer out of such a complicated system, you need to do some very major surgery.” This dramatic comparison framed the current political, institutional, and economic struggles not as mismanagement, but as the unavoidable trauma resulting from a necessary operation. The “bleeding,” he stressed, was the cost of stopping a malignant rot—practices that, he claimed, have been allowed to continue for the “last three decades.”

The Rationale for Anguish: A Fight Against Entrenched Decay

The President’s rhetoric provided a potent, conceptual shield against mounting criticism. By establishing the narrative of a systemic “cancer,” he positioned the administration’s controversial actions and the resultant public dissatisfaction as the unavoidable side effects of radical intervention. He admitted, “I am sorry that people suffered because of it, but it had to be done.” The alternative, he warned, was simple: allowing “things that we have discovered that have been being done for the last three decades will just continue.”

This commitment is focused squarely on dismantling what the President termed “abuse and this entitlement”—a sense of political impunity and inherited privilege that has allegedly plagued various sectors of governance. The campaign is against corruption, against entrenched bureaucracy, and against the notion that certain elements of the system are untouchable. The pain the nation is experiencing, therefore, is recast as a sign that the administration has committed to a deep, transformative campaign against institutional decay, rather than settling for cosmetic change.

Crucially, the President paired this acknowledgment of pain with a firm assurance of direction. He stressed that the administration is “not lost” and possesses a clear strategy: “We know what we are going to do. We know what we are doing, and we will continue this campaign against corruption.” This messaging was calculated to counter narratives of executive confusion or drift, asserting that the current turbulence is a controlled, deliberate process, worked upon by the leadership “24/7.” The ultimate, guiding aspiration is that after this period of suffering, the nation will be able to look back and conclude that the pain was “worth it.”

The Existential Threat: The War Against Fake News

Having provided a strategic defense for the turmoil facing his administration, the President then pivoted to identify what he considers the single biggest, most insidious threat to the nation’s democratic process and his reform agenda: disinformation, or “fake news.”

The President issued an urgent, deeply serious plea to the Malacañang Press Corps, recognizing that this digital chaos is an existential challenge that governmental efforts alone cannot solve. He lamented the profound shift in the credibility landscape, noting that a journalist’s work—developed over “ten years” of experience, contacts, and study—is now functionally treated as “equal in importance and credibility to this crazy conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact.”

This phenomenon, the President argued, has dangerously distorted public discourse. He stressed that what began as “funny” or “entertaining” digital noise has now become severely “damaging,” consuming “too much of the space” needed for substantive political and structural debates. The unchecked proliferation of unverified, often malicious, content directly undermines the necessary public consensus required for the “major surgery” to succeed. When the public’s understanding of reality is deliberately clouded by falsehoods, the administration’s legitimate efforts at reform are constantly delegitimized and derailed.

The President’s address served as a direct call-to-action for the media, placing the burden of resolving this crisis squarely on the shoulders of the press corps. He emphasized, “Government needs the help of all the media… to try and explain to people that you have to be more discerning about what you read and what you believe.” The media’s role, therefore, is not just to report the news, but to act as a crucial educational and filtering mechanism, helping citizens navigate the polluted informational environment and become more discerning consumers of political narratives.

The Partnership Imperative and the Path to Healing

The final message of the President’s extemporaneous speech was a powerful articulation of the “partnership imperative”—the necessary alliance between the government and the press to achieve national healing. The President openly acknowledged the massive communication challenge inherent in his reform agenda: explaining complex, structural changes to the “average citizen” whose primary concern is the tangible reality of their “everyday lives,” not “structural change and ideological ideas.”

The media’s function is to serve as the critical bridge, translating the technical and ideological necessity of the “major surgery” into language the public can understand and trust. This partnership, the President argued, is a moral obligation owed to everyone, including those who dissent. He stressed that dissent is a natural part of democracy (“nobody anywhere won an election with 100% result”), but that dissent should be based on facts, not the “crazy mind games” propagated by disinformation.

The President concluded with a message of optimism grounded in national resilience. While the country is “bleeding now,” he expressed confidence that “we are Filipinos; we may be bleeding now but we will also heal very quickly.” The ultimate goal, and the final justification for the painful period of disruption, is that the nation will emerge stronger, recognizing that the difficult, necessary actions taken against entrenched corruption and abuse were ultimately worth the cost. The partnership between the Palace and the Press, he concluded, must be solidified and strengthened to confront this joint challenge, ensuring that truth, not conspiracy, ultimately defines the path to national recovery.