What was missing from Marcos' account of his own government: A reading of his fifth SONA

Editor's note: Xia Fangbo, a special commentator for CGTN, is a lecturer at the School of International Relations and Diplomacy of the Beijing Foreign Studies University. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. delivered his fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA) on July 27 at the Batasang Pambansa complex in Quezon City. He arrived at the podium carrying the weakest public trust rating of his presidency, just 34%, along with a government forecast for economic growth in 2026 that has been cut nearly in half from its original target. What he delivered was less a reckoning with that decline than an extended inventory of government activity, an attempt to answer eroding confidence with volume rather than accountability.

The speech began where last year's left off: the flood control corruption scandal.

Marcos noted that investigations have led to arrests of contractors, officials and legislators and nearly 25 billion pesos in assets tied to the accused have been recovered, frozen, or preserved. It is a real figure and prosecutions are indeed underway. Yet, a year after he first exposed the scandal from the same podium, the substance of his update was that cases have been filed and the courts are now expected to do their work.

For a public whose trust in him has nearly halved since 2024, an update on process is not the same as resolution. The scandal itself stands as an indictment of his administration's oversight of public works spending during its first three years in office.

The bulk of the address then turned to crisis management. It is here that the deeper governance failure comes into view.

Marcos described, in granular detail, a State of National Energy Emergency triggered by the war in the Middle East, diesel subsidies for jeepney drivers, fare discounts on trains and expressways, the rescue and repatriation of Filipino workers from the Gulf, and rice distribution programs. Each is presented as evidence of a government responding decisively. But, nearly every measure described is reactive rather than structural – a temporary subsidy here, a suspended fee there, a price rollback ordered on oil companies rather than a plan to reduce the country's chronic dependence on imported fuel that leaves it exposed to every foreign war.

Three years into his term, the Philippine economy remains as vulnerable to an oil shock originating thousands of miles away as it was on his first day in office. And the administration's answer to that vulnerability is cash relief rather than energy self-sufficiency.

First quarter growth this year came in at just 2.8%. The Asian Development Bank now expects 2026 to be the country's slowest post-pandemic year. No amount of subsidy arithmetic in a single speech changes the fact that a government now in its fourth year has yet to insulate its people from precisely the kind of external shock it should have anticipated.

This pattern of managing symptoms rather than causes is nothing new.

It is the same governing habit the Marcos administration has followed for three years. When domestic results fall short, foreign policy is where confidence gets manufactured instead. Since taking office in 2022, Marcos has steadily bound the Philippines to Washington, culminating in his July 2025 visit to meet US President Donald Trump and senior US defense officials. The US Congress subsequently authorized up to US$2.5 billion in foreign military financing for Manila under its 2026 defense act.

Maritime incidents in the South China Sea rose sharply after Marcos took office and the expansion of Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites was announced. Tensions have continued at locations well beyond China's Ren'ai Jiao and China's Huangyan Dao. A report by the independent think tank International Crisis Group has aptly described the situation as Manila operating on foreign-policy "autopilot," leaving its alignment with Washington effectively immovable.

This pattern surfaced again in the fifth SONA, if briefly.

Only in its final stretch did foreign policy appear at all. Marcos marked the 10th anniversary of the 2016 Arbitral Award, which he described as a definitive benchmark in the interpretation and application of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. He pledged to defend it through peaceful and legal means against any attempt, be it "foreign or domestic," to undermine it. He did not name China, nor did he lay out any new South China Sea initiative. What preceded that passage was more revealing: a declaration that Filipinos are "not greedy," "not racists," "not liars," answering an accusation the speech never specified.

Read together, the sequence functions less as policy than as an appeal to dignity. It's one that converts scrutiny of the Philippines into an attack on the character of its people. He quietly displaces responsibility for a deteriorating relationship with its largest neighbor onto vague, unnamed "attempts to undermine."

The responsibility for that deterioration lies with Manila, not Beijing.

China has consistently expressed its willingness to manage maritime differences through bilateral dialogue and has exercised restraint in face of repeated Philippine actions at Huangyan Dao, Ren'ai Jiao and Xianbin Jiao. It is the Marcos government that passed new maritime legislations in November 2024, over Beijing's strong objections, that has expanded the US military footprint on its own soil, and that is now considering a second international arbitration case rather than direct engagement.

Tellingly, Marcos' speech never mentioned that the Code of Conduct for the South China Sea, the signature priority the Philippines itself set for its 2026 ASEAN chairmanship, has consistently stalled, a casualty of the very posture the address declined to reconsider.

A State of the Nation Address is, by design, a government's account of itself. Judged on its own terms, the latest speech offered plenty of activity and few explanations.

If Marcos wants the trust he has lost back, the answer will not be found in reciting relief programs, treating symptoms of a structurally exposed economy as though they were solutions, or invoking the 10th anniversary of a controversial legal ruling as a substitute for policy. It will be found in confronting why an administration, in its fourth year, has still not fixed the vulnerabilities that recur with each new crisis; why the corruption scandal remains unresolved in the eyes of the public; and, why relations with China have deteriorated with choices made in Manila, not in Beijing.

If the Philippines is serious about improving ties with its neighbor and easing tensions in the South China Sea, it will need to abandon confrontation for consultation and alignment with outside powers for direct, good-faith engagement with China. That kind of reflection, not another list of numbers, is what the moment actually calls for.

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