🎙️ SONA 2025 EXPOSED: Marcos Jr’s ‘Progress Report’ Has a Few Missing Pages 👀 What do you call a State of the Nation Address that name-drops power plants, schools, and scholarships—but leaves out the country’s political elephant graveyard? You call it SONA 2025. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr may have mapped out his grand vision for the Philippines with a technocratic smile, but let’s not pretend this was a full story. Because between the stats, slogans, and solar panels, there were massive silences that spoke louder than his loudest applause lines.
.jpg "SONA 2025 Marcos Jr’s fourth address is bold on goals, silent on scandals. What was said—and what was strategically unsaid.")
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s fourth State of the Nation Address (SONA), delivered on July 28, 2025, had all the trappings of a well-rehearsed TED Talk: smooth, data-packed, and bursting with plans. But just like a TED Talk, the performance left some people clapping—and others wondering what wasn’t said.
Let’s be fair: there was a lot on the menu. The President touted low inflation, falling unemployment, and an “invest in the Filipino” agenda that basically screamed “Dear foreign investors, we’re open for business!” A staggering PHP113 billion was earmarked for agriculture, with aggressive measures promised against price manipulation. He dropped big numbers on healthcare, education, digital access, water filtration, disaster resilience, and even piglet distribution. Yeah, piglets got airtime. Meanwhile, power plants? The administration plans to build 200 of them in just three years. That’s more than two new facilities a week. If that happens, we’ll all owe him a round of applause and probably lower electric bills.
Education reform took center stage too, with ambitious goals like building 40,000 schools before his term ends. Free laptops for teachers, reduced admin loads, and new pathways for tech-voc certifications were highlighted, clearly aimed at modernizing a creaky system. Health care didn’t get left behind either: PhilHealth coverage for all, free dialysis, kidney transplants, and stronger cancer care funding all made it into the script. So did zero-balance billing—a policy meant to ensure you walk out of public hospitals with your health intact and your wallet unscathed.
But here’s the thing: what wasn’t in the speech hit harder than what was.
Let’s start with the screaming silence around Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment saga. You remember, right? The Supreme Court nullified the case, sure—but that doesn’t erase the firestorm that surrounded it. Marcos didn’t even offer a single word about the Vice President, despite the fact that it’s literally one of the most high-profile constitutional dramas this administration has faced. Not even a token mention. Nada.
It gets even spicier when you realize he did, however, drop this slightly passive-aggressive jab: that the laptops being distributed this year arrived with “no anomaly.” Cue the side-eye emojis. For those paying attention, this was a subtle swipe at the 2021 laptop procurement scandal involving Sara Duterte’s earlier stint in the Department of Education. Overpriced units, outdated specs, and a trail of red flags that prompted multiple audits. The President’s carefully chosen words were basically a roast dressed as a brag.
And then there’s the giant red curtain around the International Criminal Court’s arrest of Rodrigo Duterte. A sitting former president, detained under ICC orders for alleged crimes against humanity during the drug war. This is global headline material. Yet Marcos Jr didn’t even blink in that direction. For a SONA that covered the crackdown on illegal drugs, corruption in flood projects, and the lives of OFWs, you'd think the biggest international legal scandal involving a Filipino leader would deserve at least one line. But again: silence.
And speaking of silence, where did the West Philippine Sea go? For a country constantly navigating rough geopolitical waters with China, the absence of any maritime sovereignty discussion was deafening. There were no updates, no reassurances, not even a recycled soundbite. Remember last year’s SONA, where he confidently declared we would “not surrender an inch”? Apparently, this year, not a single wave was worth mentioning.
Instead, we got a safe, sanitized speech with focus-grouped priorities and none of the political landmines. His “friend to all, enemy to none” foreign policy was repeated with a straight face, even as regional tensions keep simmering. He thanked other countries for granting clemency to 600 OFWs—a great gesture, but also one that felt like a distraction from deeper diplomatic storms brewing on the horizon.
To be clear, no one’s saying Marcos Jr didn’t cover a lot. He did. Infrastructure expansion was laid out like a spreadsheet, with airport and railway projects, free public Wi-Fi, and SIM cards for remote schools. Climate resilience was threaded throughout the speech with mentions of early warning systems and new evacuation centers. The flood control corruption probe got a sharp rebuke with a memorable “Mahiya naman kayo.” And honestly? That line slapped.
But when you step back, the speech begins to feel more like a rebrand than a report. Marcos Jr is clearly steering away from messy political squabbles and trying to paint himself as the efficient CEO of the Republic of the Philippines. “Let’s focus on output, not outrage,” seems to be the unspoken mantra. And for some sectors, that’s a welcome change. But here’s the problem: democracy doesn’t thrive on silence. When high-level controversies are swept under the rug during one of the country’s most important political events, it raises the question—what else is being left out?
We didn’t hear about the government’s stance on the ICC trial. We didn’t get a clear vision for how our foreign policy handles actual maritime aggression. We didn’t get transparency on what the administration is doing behind the scenes to heal—or fuel—the ongoing Duterte-Marcos rift. And those who expected answers about our institutional direction were left with a glossy brochure of goals, not a real-time accountability check.
SONA 2025 tried to deliver clarity, but instead it delivered curation. The facts and figures were real, but the omissions made the entire event feel less like a mirror and more like a filtered selfie. Good lighting, decent angles, but carefully cropped.
.jpg "SONA 2025 Marcos Jr’s fourth address is bold on goals, silent on scandals. What was said—and what was strategically unsaid.")
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