In his third state of the nation address (SONA) today, Marcos spoke from a fantasy bubble, completely detached from the realities of oppression and exploitation facing majority of the Filipino people. He started talking about the common complaint of high food prices then, without offering concrete solutions, quickly buried the fact by turning the page and prating about his grand-sounding achievements.

Marcos ignored and obscured the stark social realities confronting millions of peasants and workers, fisherfolk, national minorities, unemployed people, urban poor, students and young people, women, and other toiling sectors.

Marcos painted a picture of an alternative reality. He deliberately downplayed the problems of soaring prices of food, services and utilities (especially the pending sharp electricity rate increases), grossly insufficient wages, acute unemployment and contractualization, how ordinary people are being robbed of their land and livelihood, and how they are being killed or imprisoned for standing up for their rights.

Marcos falsely depicted himself as a patriot for purportedly asserting Philippine sovereignty and echoing the line “atin ang West Philippine Sea,” blurring the fact that he has completely yielded to the dictates of his US imperialist master to turn the country into an American military base, to station their troops, preposition their weapons, and drag the country into its conflict with China.

Marcos spoke only to the satisfaction of big business companies, foreign capitalists, and bureaucrat capitalists. They all benefited from his corruption, from his government’s policy of all-out import liberalization, from government-guaranteed foreign-funded infrastructure projects firmly being opposed by the people (such as the Jalaur and Wawa dam), and from the policy of cheap labor and land conversion of thousands upon thousands of hectares of land to attract foreign investments.

The real state of the nation today was heard clearly in the streets outside Congress, as well as in the provinces, and migrant workers overseas. Ordinary people spoke of their daily social problems and economic plight, and how they face political repression and state terrorism.

Their clamor for wage increases, lower prices, decent jobs, free public health, free education, genuine land reform and national industrialization reverberated across the country. They expressed their collective outrage against the US-Marcos regime and their determination to fight for their national and democratic aspirations.