FOR several weeks, I have been committing what may qualify as heresy in Philippine politics. I have argued that our problem is not merely finding better presidents. It is building institutions that do not require an extraordinary president merely to function.

Every six years, we search for another national savior. We select a face, invent a slogan, commission a jingle and persuade ourselves that this candidate will rise above the system that selected, financed and surrounded him.

Then Malacañang remains Malacañang.

The reformer discovers patronage. The populist discovers confidential funds. The strongman discovers that checks and balances are terribly inconvenient. The technocrat discovers Congress. And the people, having placed another messiah on the presidential billboard, wait six more years for the next miracle.

We keep replacing the chicken while preserving the coop and remain astonished that it lays the same rotten eggs.

The magnificent absurdity

A mature democracy should not need a national savior. It needs functioning institutions, genuine political parties, empowered local governments and citizens who hold officials accountable between elections — not merely replace the face on the billboard.

Yet here lies the absurdity: To escape presidentialism, we may first have to elect a president willing to reduce his own power.

We need a president who will use the enormous authority of his office to make that office less enormous; who will rally public support for constitutional reform, persuade Congress to surrender some privileges, strengthen local governments and transfer executive power to a parliamentary system where a failed prime minister can be removed without turning every crisis into a national soap opera.

In other words, the chicken must abolish the coop. Such a president would be rarer than honesty in a campaign advertisement. Power seldom volunteers for early retirement. Presidents do not enter Malacañang dreaming of becoming less important. Their allies did not spend fortunes electing them merely to create a system in which patronage becomes difficult, dynasties lose protection and political parties acquire principles.

So, must we wait for this miraculous creature? No.

Stop waiting for permission

Reform must stop waiting for Malacañang’s permission. A sympathetic president could accelerate change, rally public support and persuade Congress. But the movement cannot belong to him. Otherwise, reform rises and falls with one personality, and Filipinos resume their familiar search for another savior.

We must reverse the relationship. We do not wait for a president to create the movement. We create a movement that every president must confront.

If a reformer reaches Malacañang, the movement supports him. If he hesitates, it pressures him. If he suddenly discovers that concentrated presidential power is really quite comfortable — as presidents mysteriously tend to do — the movement proceeds without him. Or removes him.

That is institutional politics: The cause survives the leader. The movement must not become another afternoon of indignation — complete with banners, speeches, celebrity selfies and a return home before dinner. EDSA overthrew a dictator and restored democracy, a historic achievement. But succeeding upheavals taught us that changing the occupant does not necessarily change the architecture. We have repeatedly renovated the presidential bedroom while leaving the political house untouched.

The next movement must be less theatrical and more permanent. It needs members, local chapters, transparent accounts, civic education, expert working groups and specific demands understandable beyond academic conferences and Manila television studios.

It must reach villages, provinces, universities, professional associations, labor groups, farmers, businesses, overseas Filipinos and the vast middle class that complains brilliantly online but remains politically homeless.

A million people, a million pesos

Imagine one million Filipinos contributing one peso each — not because one million pesos can finance a national transformation, but because one million citizens making even a symbolic contribution become stakeholders rather than spectators.

Call it the Million People-Peso March.

The amount matters less than the principle. Reform must be owned by citizens, not financed by oligarchs expecting repayment through appointments, franchises, contracts or protection. A peso freely contributed is morally cleaner than a million donated with an invoice concealed behind it.

Membership should mean more than receiving messages and applauding slogans. Citizens must study the alternatives, argue over them and help decide the program. Parliamentary government and federalism should not be marketed as magical imported machinery. Neither manufactures angels. Both merely distribute power differently, locate responsibility more clearly and make failure easier to punish.

Federalism can move authority and resources away from imperial Manila. Parliamentarism can replace an incompetent government through a vote of no confidence without impeaching the entire nation. But these reforms will fail if old dynasties simply occupy new regional capitals and political butterflies continue changing parties whenever the flowers in Malacañang change color. Therefore, constitutional reform must travel with political reform.

Build the alternative now

The movement should demand a genuine Political Party Development and Financing Act — the reform long advocated by CDP president and congressman Rufus Rodriguez. Parties must represent programs rather than temporary boarding houses for ambitious personalities. Political turncoatism must carry consequences. Donations and campaign spending must be transparent. Legitimate parties should receive regulated public support so that elections are not private auctions disguised as democracy.

We should also strengthen anti-dynasty rules, local autonomy, citizen participation and safeguards against the capture of regions by provincial warlords. Otherwise, we will decentralize corruption and congratulate ourselves for bringing government closer to the thieves.

The constitutional route remains preferable: Congress acting as a constituent assembly, an elected constitutional convention or a properly organized people’s initiative. Each route has defects because every route passes through institutions guarded by those who benefit from the present arrangement.

That is precisely why organization must come first. Without a disciplined citizens’ movement, constitutional reform becomes an elite negotiation over who receives which chair. With one, even reluctant politicians must listen. The objective is not to overthrow democracy through a coup, a revolutionary government or another uniformed shortcut. We have already spent enough of our history searching for benevolent strongmen and discovering, rather late, the adjective was imaginary.

The democratic revolution must precede the constitutional one: educate, organize, finance and mobilize citizens until reform can no longer be dismissed as a hobby of professors, retired politicians and newspaper columnists.

Make the president optional

Perhaps one day we will elect an extraordinary president courageous enough to reform the office that made him powerful. But after a lifetime of Philippine politics, I would rather not stake the Republic on another miracle. A sound system should help good leaders succeed without allowing bad ones to tow the entire country into the swamp.

So, yes, to escape the presidency, we may first elect a president. But we must not wait for him, worship him or make him the proprietor of reform.

The movement must already exist before he arrives. It must support him when he advances reform, confront him when he retreats and survive him when he leaves.

For nearly a century, we have asked who will save the Philippines. Perhaps the revolutionary question is simpler: When will Filipinos stop waiting to be saved?

Build the movement. Change the rules. Abolish the coop. Then the president becomes optional.

The Senate President crowed yesterday that the party he nominally coheads, PDP-Laban, has a “pleasant problem” — too many potential senatorial candidates. Koko Pimentel’s estimate is they have up to 20 possible choices for the 12-person slate for the 2019 senatorial race. But his list includes the five administration-affiliated senatorial incumbents up for reelection next year. This is a group that has made noises that, much as it prefers to remain in the administration camp, it is unhappy with the way PDP-Laban has been designating its local leaders and candidates, and therefore prefers to strike out on its own, perhaps in alliance with the other administration (regional) party, Hugpong ng Pagbabago, headed by the President’s daughter and current Davao City mayor, Sara Duterte.

Setting aside, then, the five-person “Force,” the administration-oriented but not PDP-friendly reelectionists (Nancy Binay, Sonny Angara, Cynthia Villar, Grace Poe, and JV Ejercito), what Koko’s crowing over is a mixed bag. Some of them have been floated by Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez (with whom Mayor Duterte clashed in recent months): six representatives (Gloria Macapagal Arroyo who is in her last term in the House of Representatives; Albee Benitez, Karlo Nograles, Rey Umali, Geraldine Roman, and Zajid Mangudadatu), three Cabinet members (Bong Go, Harry Roque, and Francis Tolentino), and two other officials (Mocha Uson and Ronald dela Rosa), which still only adds up to 11 possible candidates (who are the missing three?).

Of all of these, the “Force” reelectionists are only fair-weather allies of the present dispensation; their setting themselves apart is about much more than the mess PDP-Laban made in, say, San Juan where support for the Zamoras makes it extremely unattractive for JV Ejercito to consider being in the same slate. Their cohesion is about thinking ahead: Creating the nucleus for the main coalition to beat in the 2022 presidential election. The contingent of congressmen and congresswomen who could become candidates for the Senate, however, seems more a means to kick the Speaker’s rivals upstairs (at least in the case of Benitez and Arroyo) and pad the candidates’ list with token but sacrificial candidates, a similar situation to the executive officials being mentioned as possible candidates (of the executive officials, only Go seems viable, but making him run would deprive the President of the man who actually runs the executive department, and would be a clear signal that the administration is shifting to a post-term protection attitude instead of the more ambitious system-change mode it’s been on, so far).

Vice President Leni Robredo has been more circumspect, saying she’s not sure the Liberal Party can even muster a full slate. The party chair, Kiko Pangilinan, denied that a list circulating online (incumbent Bam Aquino, former senators Mar Roxas, Jun Magsaysay, TG Guingona, current and former representatives Jose Christopher Belmonte, Kaka Bag-ao, Edcel Lagman, Raul Daza, Gary Alejano and Erin Tañada, former governor Eddie Panlilio and Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña) had any basis in fact.

What both lists have in common is they could be surveys-on-the-cheap, trial balloons to get the public pulse. Until the 17th Congress reconvenes briefly from May 14 to June 1 for the tail end of its second regular session (only to adjourn sine die until the third regular session begins on July 23), it has nothing much to do. Except, that is, for the barangay elections in May, after a last-ditch effort by the House to postpone them yet again to October failed.

Names can be floated but the real signal will come in July, when the President mounts the rostrum and calls for the big push for a new constitution—or not. Connected to this would be whether the Supreme Court disposes of its own chief, which would spare the Senate—and thus, free up the legislative calendar—to consider Charter change instead of an impeachment trial. In the meantime, what congressmen do seem abuzz over is an unrefusable invitation to the Palace tomorrow — to mark Arroyo’s birthday. An event possibly pregnant with meaning.

Here’s a striking statement about love shared with me by an English college mentor. “Love knows no grammar. How it works can’t be measured by any parts or figures of speech. It goes beyond the literate and illiterate. The sad reality is that, even a fool who has got no philosophy is not spared of its harsh reality.” After almost three decades, I reminded him through a private message of his words. Here’s what he said. “Thank you, Jord. This statement about love is searing to the heart. And, yes, fools do fall for it too. But I thought that we as well speak of the beauty that it gives and not so much focus on the harsh realities. After all, our country has had enough of the negativities.” Thank you, dearest Sir Eugene.

In these decisive times when our nation trembles under the weight of corruption, inequality, and disillusionment, it is you―the youth, burning with idealism, courage, and an unyielding sense of right―who must stand at the forefront of CHANGE. The future of the Philippines hangs in the balance, calling not for silence or apathy, but for unity, conviction, and action. Let your dreams be the spark that ignites renewal; let your voices thunder against injustice; let your hands build the nation our forebears envisioned but never fulfilled. Now is the hour to awaken, to rise, and to lead the march toward a just and transformed Philippines.

Remember, the pages of our history resound with the triumphs of youth who dared to dream and act. From the Propagandists who wielded the pen against tyranny to the Katipuneros who took up arms for freedom, it was always the young who ignited revolutions and rebuilt nations. As Dr. Jose Rizal declared, “The youth is the hope of our motherland,” but that hope is not a gift to be passively claimed; it is a duty to be earned through courage and purpose.

Today’s generation must transform awareness into action―to confront corruption with integrity, to challenge inequality with empathy, and to counter apathy with participation. The time for mere commentary has passed. What the nation demands now is commitment, creativity, and collective resolve. When the youth stand united in conscience and conviction, no obstacle is insurmountable, no reform impossible. The power to redeem the nation’s promise lies not in the hands of the few, but in the awakened spirit of the many. Rise, therefore, as one generation with one objective―to forge a Philippines worthy of its people’s deepest hopes. And to those who were once the torchbearers of youth but have since laid down their fire―hear this call.

The nation does not forget its veterans of hope, those who once believed that change was possible but have since grown weary in the long twilight of disappointment. Thus far history grants no sanctuary to resignation. It demands of every generation the same unrelenting duty―to defend what is right, to confront what is wrong, and to labor still for what remains unfinished.

Now is the moment to rise again. Let not caution disguise itself as wisdom, nor comfort as peace. The courage that once stirred your youth still flickers within; rekindle it, and let it burn anew for the sake of those who follow. Your experience, tempered by time, must now join hands with the fervor of the young - to guide, to mentor, to strengthen.

Together, let the wisdom of the seasoned and the passion of the rising coalesce into a single, indomitable force for renewal. For the task of nation-building is not bound by age, but by conviction. The call of the motherland resounds to all who still believe that the story of the Filipino is not yet complete―and that redemption, though delayed, is still within our grasp if only we choose to act once more. And to those whose hands have long gripped the levers of power―hardened by privilege, dulled by entitlement―hear this with clarity: the era of self-preservation must yield to the dawn of selfless service.

The nation can no longer afford leaders who mistake possession for stewardship, nor governance for dominion. The time has come to relinquish the throne of complacency and make way for the custodians of vision, courage, and renewal.

To step aside is not to surrender, but to honor the sacred rhythm of nationhood―to allow new voices, new hearts, and new minds to breathe life into institutions that have grown stale from neglect. True leadership is an act of stewardship, and stewardship demands humility―to know when to lead, and when to pass the torch. Those who have ruled long enough must now become mentors, not masters; guides, not gatekeepers.

To the youth who will inherit this burden and blessing alike, the call is equally profound. Lead not with arrogance, but with awareness; not with impulse, but with integrity. Let optimism be your discipline―a conscious act of faith in the nation’s capacity to rise again. Lead with inclusivity that unites rather than divides, with courage that reforms rather than destroys, and with resilience that endures when hope seems frail.

For the measure of a new generation’s greatness lies not in its defiance alone, but in its wisdom to build where others have failed. Let your leadership become the living testament that the Philippines, once disillusioned, has learned at last to believe again―through you.

Now, the Filipino youth stand at a defining crossroad of history. The echoes of the past and the murmurs of the future converge upon this moment, and in your hands rests the fragile, however formidable promise of a nation reborn. You are the inheritors of unfinished dreams and the architects of what is yet to be. United in thought and deed, strengthened by the wisdom of history and the fire of conviction, you possess the power to shape a Philippines anchored in justice, animated by democracy, and sustained by the collective flourishing of its people.

The mantle of responsibility has passed to you. Do not falter beneath its weight; bear it with courage, for it is through your resolve that the nation will rise from the ruins of complacency. Let your unity transcend boundaries of region, class, and creed. Let your integrity redefine leadership, and your compassion restore faith in the Filipino spirit.

This is your hour. Let this narrative be not merely a call to awaken, but a solemn commitment―to the country that nurtures you, to the people who believe in you, and to the generations who will follow your example. Stand firm, for you are the heartbeat of a nation yearning to live with dignity once more. Speak right and shine!

Rise, Filipino youth, and let history remember that when your time came ―you stood unwavering, and the nation moved forward.