On the evening of Sunday, July 26, 2026 — just hours before President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was scheduled to deliver his fifth State of the Nation Address — the Liberal Party of the Philippines fired a pointed pre-SONA salvo at Malacañang, pressing the administration on unresolved flood control allegations, the long-stalled Anti-Political Dynasty Law, and Philippine sovereignty in the West Philippine Sea.
The opposition party’s statement, released Sunday, carried an unmistakable echo of the President’s own public shaming of government officials during his 2025 SONA. In that address, Marcos himself had disclosed alleged irregularities in flood control disbursements and publicly declared, “Mahiya naman kayo,” — a rebuke now turned back on the President by the Liberal Party, which said in its statement: “Mahiya ka naman sa kapwa mo Pilipino, Mr. President.”
A Year of Allegations, No Convictions
The Liberal Party pointedly reminded the public that roughly twelve months had elapsed since Marcos raised the alarm over flood control fund anomalies at his 2025 SONA — and that the central question, in the party’s words, remains unanswered: Sino ang tunay na mananagot? — who will truly be held accountable?
According to the Liberal Party’s statement, while names were surfaced, allegations raised, and investigations formally launched over the course of the past year, no clear convictions have resulted. The party warned that without concrete legal consequences, the scandal is at risk of becoming, in their words, “just another controversy that fades away” — reduced to a bitter footnote in history rather than a watershed moment of genuine reform.
The Liberal Party was emphatic that the money at the heart of the controversy was not an abstraction. The party’s statement described these funds as taxes paid by workers, farmers, fisherfolk, businesses, and ordinary Filipino families across the country — resources that, the party said, “should have gone to safe communities, functioning schools, health services, jobs, and a better future for the youth.” The opposition argued that every peso allegedly diverted from flood control infrastructure is a direct theft from the people who needed those projects most.
Floods Are Back — But Accountability Is Not
With the rainy season once again submerging communities in floodwaters, the Liberal Party underscored what it called an intolerable contradiction: ordinary Filipinos bracing their homes against rising water and fearing for their livelihoods, while those who allegedly profited from flood control projects meant to protect them remain — as the party’s statement put it — “safe and free.”
The Liberal Party, in its pre-SONA statement, issued three specific demands of the Marcos administration: first, that those implicated in the alleged anomalies be prosecuted; second, that stolen public funds be recovered in full; and third, that justice be delivered for every peso of hard-earned taxpayer money diverted away from the flood control infrastructure Filipino communities depend on.
Anti-Dynasty Law and West Philippine Sea on the Opposition’s Agenda
The opposition party’s statement extended its challenge well beyond the flood control controversy. On the question of political dynasties, the Liberal Party pressed for the enactment of an Anti-Political Dynasty Law, noting that the constitutional prohibition on political dynasties has been unambiguously written into the nation’s fundamental law — yet has been allowed to remain unlegislated for decades. The party argued that the stranglehold of a small number of families over political power must be broken.
On the West Philippine Sea, the Liberal Party called on the Marcos administration to adopt a firmer posture in defending Philippine sovereignty. The party’s statement described China’s actions against Filipino fisherfolk and government personnel operating in Philippine-claimed waters as dangerous and unlawful, and said Beijing must be held to account for those actions.
The Liberal Party tied these issues together in a broader argument: that behind each instance of corruption, dynastic entrenchment, and weak national governance lies a generation steadily being stripped of opportunity and a future.
The Opposition’s Message as Marcos Heads to Batasang Pambansa
Wrapping up its pre-SONA message ahead of the Monday, July 27, 2026 address at the Batasang Pambansa in Quezon City, the Liberal Party made clear that rhetorical flourishes and new slogans would no longer be enough to satisfy public demand for results.
“Mr. President, we have to make the government work. Make it work for the Filipino people — not for the corrupt, not for political dynasties, and not for those who put their own interests above the nation,” the party said in its statement, as reported in the opposition group’s official release.
The party’s closing words — “Mahiya ka naman, Mr. President. Panahon nang may managot. Panahon nang kumilos” (It is time for accountability. It is time to act.) — were a deliberate inversion of Marcos’s own language from a year ago, signaling that the opposition intends to hold the President to the standard he himself set in 2025.
By the Numbers
- 5th — State of the Nation Address Marcos is scheduled to deliver on July 27, 2026
- 1 year — elapsed since Marcos first disclosed alleged flood control fund irregularities at his 2025 SONA
- 0 — convictions resulting from investigations into flood control anomalies, according to the Liberal Party’s statement
Why This Matters
The Liberal Party’s pre-SONA challenge places the flood control fund controversy — originally raised by Marcos himself during his 2025 address — squarely back at the center of national political debate, with the opposition stressing that a full year has passed without convictions or fund recovery. The statement also reflects mounting pressure on two additional governance fronts: the decades-long failure to legislate the constitutionally mandated ban on political dynasties, and the continuing threat to Philippine sovereign rights in the West Philippine Sea. As Marcos prepares to deliver his fifth SONA on July 27, 2026, the Liberal Party’s message makes clear that accountability for past disclosures — not new pronouncements — will be the yardstick against which his address is measured.
Source: Originally reported by the Liberal Party of the Philippines official statement, as published on wire reports.
