Reset After ‘Rejection’

The May 12, 2025 midterm elections were a rebuke.

Opposition candidates flipped three Senate seats and narrowed the UniTeam coalition’s edge in the House, rattling Malacañang.

Within days, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered every Cabinet secretary to submit a courtesy resignation, framing the mass shake-up as a “bold reset.” The move grabbed headlines, but the deeper question is whether performance—or politics—will guide the second-half agenda.

A genuine reset begins with accountability, not theatrics. Simply asking loyalists to vacate their chairs means little if the same chairs are refilled without clear metrics or timelines.

Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin insisted “this is not a purge,” yet the optics recall previous administrations that promised housecleaning but delivered recycling.

Markets watched one portfolio above all: finance.

Marcos declined the resignations of Finance Secretary Ralph Recto, Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman; Economy, Planning, and Development Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, Trade Secretary Cristina Roque, and Special Assistant to the President for Investment and Economic Affairs Secretary Frederick Go.

Business groups cheered, arguing continuity steadies foreign inflows and shields the peso. Still, investors want more than familiar faces; they want a credible plan to cool food inflation, unblock infrastructure bottlenecks, and lift long-stalled mining and renewable-energy projects.

Recto’s vow to “keep our eyes on the fiscal ball” rings hollow without new revenue ideas beyond sin-tax tweaks and privatization chatter. Retaining the economic quartet buys time, not confidence.

Credit-rating agencies have already flagged shrinking fiscal space and a debt-to-GDP ratio hovering above 60 percent.

The Palace must demonstrate how each department will squeeze value from every Philippine peso and deliver public goods faster. Failure to do so risks another downgrade—and a steeper borrowing tab for future generations.

Foreign affairs offered a different signal.

Enrique Manalo’s replacement by veteran diplomat Theresa Lazaro—Manila’s lead negotiator in ASEAN–China code-of-conduct talks who brokered the Ayungin Shoal resupply pact—suggests Malacañang wants steady dialogue, not saber-rattling.

Her appointment keeps a seasoned technocrat at the helm and preserves channels with Beijing even as Manila deepens defense ties with Washington and Tokyo.

Lost amid Manila-centric chatter is a regional truth: no reset will succeed if it leaves the Visayas behind.

Western Visayas drives national sugar, seafood, and tourism earnings, yet no Visayan sits in the macro-policy circle. The region exported PHP 168 billion worth of sugar, fish and tourism receipts last year, yet no full-blooded Visayan sits at the macro-policy table.

Former Energy now Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Raphael Lotilla of Antique and Tourism Secretary Christina Frasco of Cebu survived the first round of cuts, but theirs are sector posts, not agenda-setting seats.

The vacancy wave offers Marcos an opening to correct that imbalance. Appointing a Visayan with ground-level knowledge of agribusiness logistics or island-grid woes would anchor policies in real-world problems rather than Metro Manila spreadsheets.

Sugar growers in Negros still grapple with fluctuating import quotas; fishers feel subsidies evaporate before they reach provincial pumps.

Boracay’s recovery demands seamless airport-port-road links the current “Build Better More” list barely mentions. A Visayan inside the economic cluster could champion these bread-and-butter issues.

Beyond representation, the next slate must embrace transparent scorecards.

Each secretary should publish 90-day deliverables tied to measurable outcomes—kilometers of farm-to-market roads laid, classrooms finished, broadband masts raised.

Quarterly dashboards would allow Congress and citizens to track progress and reward results, not rhetoric.

Second, agencies must widen their listening posts. Civil-society audits and digital town halls can crowd-source red-flag data faster than any Commission on Audit report.

Third, the Palace should codify a standing rule: courtesy resignations accepted automatically after two consecutive quarters of unmet targets. That converts symbolism into a continuous performance contract.

Finally, Marcos cannot ignore the political subtext. The midterms exposed fatigue with dynasty politics and unmet pocketbook promises.

Keeping the economic team amounts to a bet that the message, not the messengers, failed.

If results do not improve by year-end, the electorate will not care whether a secretary is a technocrat or a long-time ally—they will remember who asked for trust and squandered it.

For the Visayas, the clock is ticking louder. Panay and Negros still await decisive action on grid interconnection, cold-chain hubs, and air and seaport expansions.

These projects need Cabinet champions who understand that “regional” is not a synonym for “peripheral.”

Appoint them, empower them, and hold them to the same yardstick as their Metro Manila peers. The courtesy-resignation gambit has bought Malacañang a brief window to recalibrate.

Fill it with substance, regional equity, and measurable goals—or risk another rebuke come 2028.