The Duty to Stay Angry

By Vincent R. Pozon

It’s a Trick: Preaching Love to Buy Time

There are those who insist we should not “stoke anger” over the flood-control funds scandal. They appeal to calm, to national character, to a so-called Filipino virtue of resilience and forgiveness.

That is precisely what the guilty are counting on.

Cebu alone received ₱26.7 billion in flood-control funds—yet it drowned. Across the country, billions have vanished into mansions, luxury cars, private jets, yachts, and yes, also into projects later exposed as hollow, inflated, or entirely fictitious. And yet, before any restitution, before a single handcuff clicks shut, the chorus rises: "Be patient." They want the moral temperature to drop.

But that message is not neutral. It is politically weaponized—maliciously injected into public discourse.

This pattern is so old, so ingrained, it feels almost ritualistic: a scandal erupts; the public seethes; investigations launch with fanfare. A few senators may briefly entertain jail time; the rest retreat into luxury, falling conspicuously silent whenever corruption resurfaces in session—lest anyone recall their names, too, were mentioned, some repeatedly.

And, as with countless cases before, they will walk free.

Through the decades, this is how impunity survives in the Philippines—not through force, but through the exhaustion of the forgiving.

The False Gospel of Calm

Congress has quietly shelved its once-grandiose multi-committee investigations—TV-worthy theater suddenly yanked off the air. The Senate drags its feet. The fact-finding commission head pleads for love.

But anger has a moral function.

The Theology of Accountability

The Bible does not forbid anger; it forbids cruelty. To feel nothing in the face of brazen corruption is not peace—it is the decay of conscience. The prophets—Amos, Isaiah, Micah—did not soothe the people; they thundered against the corrupt and the cruel.

Jesus did not whisper in the temple; he overturned tables.

Anger is the immune system of a nation’s soul. It resists infection. It keeps us awake when power would prefer we sleep. To “move on” too soon is to let painkillers give us a semblance of cure.

Sooner or later, the media will chase the next sensation, or, most probably, be commanded to by its corporate masters.

So when the cameras leave, vigilance must not.

The people must hold the wound agape—until the medicine of justice, however painful, is finally applied.

Count the days: since the President’s promises. Since the hearings began. Since the arrests that never came.

They want fatigue to do what bribery cannot. Our duty is to deny them that mercy.