21/09/2026
๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐, ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐
Today, September 21, marks 54 years since then-President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. signed ๐ฃ๐ฟ๐ผ๐ฐ๐น๐ฎ๐บ๐ฎ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป ๐ก๐ผ. ๐ญ๐ฌ๐ด๐ญ, placing the Philippines under Martial Law.
The regime ushered in a period marked by widespread human rights abuses, where thousands of Filipinos were arrested, detained, tortured, disappeared, and killed.
๐๐ฏ๐ผ๐๐ฒ ๐ฏ๐ฒ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ฝ๐๐๐ฐ๐ต๐ผ๐น๐ผ๐ด๐ ๐๐๐๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ป๐๐, ๐๐ฒ ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐๐ถ๐น๐ถ๐ฝ๐ถ๐ป๐ผ๐. The Tytana Psychology Society stands with the victims and survivors of Martial Law, uniting with all those defending truth, justice, and democracy.
May this day serve as a ๐๐ฎ๐ธ๐ฒ-๐๐ฝ ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐น๐น: history is not something we simply look back onโit is something we must understand, remember, and learn from. As we continue to face issues of corruption, historical distortion, and threats to truth and human rights, may we remain vigilant in protecting the voices and freedoms that were once silence.
๐ก๐ฒ๐๐ฒ๐ฟ ๐ฎ๐ด๐ฎ๐ถ๐ป. ๐ก๐ฒ๐๐ฒ๐ฟ ๐ณ๐ผ๐ฟ๐ด๐ฒ๐.
๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐
๐๐๐๐๐๐ | ๐๐ข๐ฌ๐ญ๐จ๐ซ๐ฒ ๐๐ซ๐จ๐ฆ ๐๐๐ฅ๐จ๐ฐ, ๐๐๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ง๐ญ๐๐๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ ๐๐ซ๐จ๐ฆ ๐๐๐จ๐ฏ๐
No mere wake for the bygone era of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.โs martial law, rallies once held in remembrance have morphed into a reckoning with the present. There spilled long-standing grudges, refusing burial by time.
But what, precisely, has driven them into the streets at present? Several key flashpoints lay bare the pressures that have brought discontent to a head:
๐. ๐๐๐
๐โ๐ฌ ๐๐ฅ๐จ๐ฌ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐๐ก๐๐ฉ๐ญ๐๐ซ
Curtaining off 37 years of vigilance, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility will close on September 30, its decades-long watch yielding at last to a financial pipeline gone steadily dry.
Already hemmed in by moneyed interests, the Philippine media ecosystem faces an ever-tightening vise, a pressure made more acute as concentrated political power further contracts the space in which independent journalism can breathe.
CNN Philippines has gone dark, ABS-CBN has scaled back, and the Inquirerโs print operations have been quelled to a halt; should CMFR follow suit, the country loses yet another institutional bulwark, leaving an already threadbare system of checks on the press with one less safeguardโand the public with one fewer place to turn when the lines of defense grow thinner still.
Curtailing independent media is hardly a new pressure point: under Marcos Sr., newspapers, radio stations, and television networks were shuttered or placed under government control, making the erosion of CMFRโs watchdog role today resonate with an older history of a press brought to heel.
๐. ๐๐ก๐ ๐๐ฅ๐จ๐จ๐-๐๐จ๐ง๐ญ๐ซ๐จ๐ฅ ๐๐จ๐ง๐ญ๐ซ๐จ๐ฏ๐๐ซ๐ฌ๐ฒ
Of the โฑ545.64 billion poured into 9,855 flood-control projects between July 2022 and May 2025, 6,021, worth roughly โฑ350 billion, were left without even the barest particulars of the works; meanwhile, a mere 15 contractors cornered about a fifth of the allocation, a concentration difficult to square with the communities still left vulnerable when the waters rise.
Then came the โฑ7.44-billion plunder case filed against former House Speaker Martin Romualdez over alleged kickbacks from government projects, bringing accountability into uncomfortable proximity to the countryโs highest political circles. It echoes the Marcos Sr. era, when state wealth accrued to a select circle of cronies, whereupon an old question returns to the fore: who, in the end, gets to profit from the purse of the state?
๐. ๐๐ข๐ฅ ๐ฉ๐ซ๐ข๐๐ ๐ก๐ข๐ค๐๐ฌ
MANIBELAโs presence at the September 21, 2025, anti-corruption rallies hardly amounted to any exercise in solidarity: by ferrying demonstrators to Luneta and the EDSA Shrine free of charge, the transport group brought its own grievances along for the ride, lending the protest a stake that was anything but abstract.
That stake surfaced anew on September 15, 2026, as another steep fuel-price hikeโโฑ5.68 per litre for gasoline and โฑ4.31 for dieselโfurther tightened the margins of a trade already exposed to the whims of pump prices.
Whether the grievance is alleged corruption or mounting fuel costs, transport workers remain downstream of decisions made far from the road. The 1970s oil shocks make the parallel plain: fuel and consumer prices climbed in much the same vein as daily fill-ups do today.
๐. ๐๐๐ฑ ๐๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐๐
As the nation revisits the advent of authoritarian rule, so too has the debate over Pax Silica renewed probing eyes of the interests the state advancesโand those it may leave vulnerable.
With more than 70 organizations arrayed beneath its banner, the Network Opposed to Pax Silica joined forces on August 31 to sound the alarm over the proposed New Clark City Economic Security Zone, warning that its establishment could place land and food security at risk, with environmental consequences that may prove difficult, if not impossible, to reverse.
The government, for its part, has touted US$40 billion to US$70 billion in prospective investments, with the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) projecting more than 130,000 jobs from the proposed development.
That very tension, too, has an older pedigree: the late regimeโs development push was often pursued through projects that concentrated economic gains while displacing costs onto communities, leaving behind the same question now shadowing Pax Silicaโdevelopment for whom, and at whose expense?
๐. ๐๐๐ญ๐ข๐ฏ๐ข๐ฌ๐ญ๐ฌ, ๐ซ๐๐-๐ญ๐๐ ๐ ๐ข๐ง๐ , ๐๐ง๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ฉ๐จ๐ฅ๐ข๐๐ข๐ง๐ ๐จ๐ ๐๐ข๐ฌ๐ฌ๐๐ง๐ญ
Through more than five decades of securitized governance, an order once fashioned around the language of threat has endured into one wherein dissent itself can be made to assume a security concern, with red-tagging blurring the line between speaking up and being marked for persecution.
The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) maintains that its campaign is directed toward forestalling communist recruitment; even so, rights advocates caution that branding activists as national threats can furnish a pretext for harassment and violence, with the Ateneo Human Rights Center recording 456 validated red-tagging incidents from January to June 2024, as to leave those singled out at the mercy of what follows.
For activists reckoning with an authoritarian past, the changing faces of power do not alter the principle by which resistance is measured: it admits no partisan exemption, extending from the Palace unto the street, from those who wield authority unto those who challenge it, and asking of each the selfsame thingโthat whoever commands the state remain answerable for what it does.
๐๐ ๐ฒ๐๐๐ซ๐ฌ ๐จ๐ง, ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐ฎ๐ ๐ ๐ฅ๐ ๐๐ง๐๐ฎ๐ซ๐๐ฌ
The names have changed, as have the mechanisms by which power operates. Yet across the press, public spending, livelihoods, development, and dissent, the same historical question keeps resurfacing: who gets to exercise power, who absorbs its costs, and who gets to hold power to account?
Let it be known that our revolt did not perish with the years that followed, for alive it remains, its end yet to be reached.
54 ๐บ๐ฆ๐ข๐ณ๐ด ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ค๐ฐ๐ถ๐ฏ๐ต๐ช๐ฏ๐จโฆ
