Rage is not enough

By Herman M. Lagon

The streets were loud again last weekend. Across Luneta, Iloilo, Cebu, and Cagayan de Oro, we filled the streets with chants, placards, and even dogs in protest vests—united against corruption that washed away trust and flood funds. An ordinary Sunday turned historic as rally veterans from the 90s marched shoulder-to-shoulder with Gen Z livestreamers. Civil society veterans locked arms with first-time protesters who had never before uttered a political slogan. Even children on their parents’ shoulders shouted reform slogans in tiny voices. The humor, the art, the passion were all Filipino. But so was the quiet question that lingered when the chants died down: what happens now?

It is tempting to celebrate the numbers and call it a win. Tens of thousands in Manila, thousands more in provincial cities, and millions online sharing memes and slogans. For one day, despite the rain, the nation seemed awake, alive, and unafraid. But rallies, however historic, are only the opening salvo. A street party does not dismantle a patronage system. A trending hashtag does not jail a corrupt senator or congressman. A crocodile costume mocking corrupt contractors does not repair a single dike. The danger ahead is not silence but weariness. Time and again, outrage has flared like a flash flood—raging in the moment, gone by morning, and leaving mud in its wake.

What is needed now is organization. We have seen this before: the 2013 Million People March made noise, but it died down, and those accused found their way back. Transparency International’s 2024 score of 33/100 shows how little progress we have made. If we are serious, the next step is clear—build a deliberate movement to push reforms such as whistleblower protection and an independent public works commission. The rallies reminded the government that we are watching. The follow-up must remind them that we are not leaving.

Concrete reforms are already on the table. Civil society statements from universities, churches, professional organizations, and cause-oriented groups outline clear demands: prosecute the guilty without exemptions, return stolen money, blacklist questionable contractors, and require all project details to be published online for public monitoring. Legislative fixes are also urgent. The Freedom of Information and the Whistleblowers bills have gathered dust for decades. Bicameral budget deliberations still happen behind closed doors where insertions bloom like mushrooms. The DPWH continues to be plagued by “ghost projects” that engineers on the ground know are either overpriced, substandard, or imaginary. Imagine if classrooms were run that way—where students submit blank test papers and still get perfect scores. We would laugh in disbelief. Yet this is our reality in public service.

For teachers like me, the analogy cuts deeper. In class, we tell students to show their solutions and cite their sources. In governance, we must demand the same: show receipts, show outputs, show results. Otherwise, no grade, no trust, no budget. If we insist on rigor in school, why do we allow shortcuts in government? This is where education can anchor the fight. Surveys by the Social Weather Stations (2023) show that a majority of Filipinos believe corruption is “a normal part of government.” That normalization must be unlearned. Our classrooms, our homes, and our communities must become spaces where integrity is not optional, where utang na loob and pakikisama are reclaimed for solidarity rather than patronage.

The rallies also proved that corruption is not a partisan issue. In Iloilo, I saw progressives and students marching beside business leaders, church groups beside student councils. People who used to argue over politics were united by a bigger enemy: systemic theft. This unity must be protected. The temptation of trapos will be to hijack the outrage and turn it into factional warfare—Marcos versus Duterte, yellow versus red, or whatever color war serves them. But corruption is colorless, and so must our resistance be. The campaign must remain broad, inclusive, and focused on values rather than personalities. Otherwise, we risk another round of “palit-pangulo” politics, where one dynasty replaces another and the system survives intact.

Sustaining momentum will not be easy. Protests take resources, energy, and courage. Organizers like Kiko Aquino Dee admitted exhaustion after the Trillion Peso March, and that is expected. But movements that endure find ways to adapt. Some groups are exploring citizen audits of infrastructure projects. Others are training young volunteers to monitor local budgets. Online communities are archiving corruption cases so names are not forgotten when election season comes. These quieter, less glamorous tasks are the real work of vigilance. As behavioral studies show, long-term accountability is built not on one-time bursts of emotion but on consistent reinforcement of norms (World Bank, 2022). If corruption is normalized, so too must integrity be normalized.

The challenge now is to make the protests purposive. Marches should not just be cathartic release but linked to specific campaigns—pushing Congress to pass transparency laws, pressuring DPWH to clean its ranks, monitoring cases in the Ombudsman and Sandiganbayan. If agencies stall, the rallies must return, bigger and sharper, not as festivals but as focused demands. Citizens must also learn to use elections as accountability tools. After the PDAF scandal, two implicated senators lost in 2019. That was not coincidence—it was political accountability at work. The same must happen in 2028 and beyond. Anger must translate to ballots, not just banners.

As an educator for almost three decades already, I have seen how students respond to structure. Give them a clear rubric and they rise to expectations. Give them vague reminders and they drift. Our democracy is no different. The rubric now is clear: prosecute, recover, legislate, reform. Anything less is a failing grade. And if our leaders refuse to study for this exam, then citizens must be ready to withhold not just votes but the legitimacy they crave. We are, after all, the teachers of this republic. It is our duty to grade them.

The late Jesuit Fr. Horacio de la Costa once wrote that “a people without memory is a people without destiny.” We marched not only against today’s scandals but against the repetition of history—of Martial Law lies, of pork barrel scams, of dynasties recycling power. The question of what comes next is not a puzzle for politicians to solve but a challenge for us to accept. If yesterday we shouted, tomorrow we must organize. If yesterday we marched, tomorrow we must legislate, monitor, and vote. Our children deserve to inherit not a culture of corruption but a culture of accountability. The fight is not finished, but neither are we.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a ”student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.