Scandal fatigue

The decision of members of the House Committee on Justice to dismiss the two impeachment complaints against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was framed as a triumph of procedure over politics. Yet, as more details surface, the vote now looks less like principled restraint and more like part of a familiar choreography—one where accountability is expertly dodged while the public is expected to avert its gaze.

Rumors have long swirled that some of the lawmakers who voted to junk the impeachment cases are themselves secretly involved in anomalous flood control projects. These suspicions gained renewed traction with the abrupt disappearance of a crucial narrative thread: the possibility of fugitive congressman Zaldy Co returning to personally testify at an impeachment trial. He is expected to confirm details of corruption and collusion involving the president himself as contained in his series of video confessions. Without his physical presence, the impeachment allegations are tagged hearsay.

Then came another surprise. Party-list congressman Edvic Yap quietly resigned from Congress. Yap is one of three lawmakers earlier flagged by the Office of the Ombudsman in connection with unfinished flood control projects worth ₱275.9 million in La Union. Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla later revealed that the Anti-Money Laundering Council uncovered a paper trail showing Yap’s bank account receiving roughly ₱70 million from contractor spouses Sarah and Curlee Discaya. The resignation, instead of signaling accountability, feels more like an escape hatch—an exit timed to blunt deeper scrutiny.

Elsewhere, the Department of Public Works and Highways tried a different tactic: visibility. The DPWH Secretary boarded a bus with members of the media to personally inspect the battered stretches of the Maharlika Highway in Bicol and Samar. The gesture was meant to project urgency and concern, but it also underscored a troubling irony. The sorry state of these vital roads has been known for years. Seeing them anew does not explain why billions have already been spent, nor why outcomes remain so dismal.

What makes matters worse is the impending dissolution of the Independent Commission on Infrastructure. With no replacements named by the President, ongoing and future investigations into anomalous infrastructure projects are set to lose an institutional backbone. Oversight, already fragile, is being quietly hollowed out.

Taken together, these events paint a convoluted but unmistakable picture. Anti-corruption efforts are being selectively amplified, redirected, or stalled, depending on who stands to be exposed. In the end, no one truly benefits—not the public, not institutions, and certainly not democracy. What remains is the perception that rules bend for the powerful, while accountability dissolves into procedural fog.

This year opened with aggressive political maneuvers: overlapping impeachment complaints against the country’s two highest officials, widely seen as tests of how far legal mechanisms can be weaponized to eliminate future election adversaries. Yet while political elites are busy gaming the system, the nation’s deeper crises persist. Children struggle with alarmingly low reading comprehension. Tourism campaigns strangely focus on the Secretary rather than destinations. Free medical coverage remains highly restrictive. Economic growth limps along, failing to lift most Filipinos.

Amid all the noise, the real danger is not scandal fatigue—it is normalization. When corruption becomes routine, and accountability optional, governance turns into theater. And the audience, once again, is left paying for the show.