Eric S. Cabalida

There are images that speak louder than words. For me, this is one of them. A raised fist. A steady face. A woman standing before the crowd despite everything that has been thrown her way. I look at this image of Inday Sara and I see courage, defiance, and determination. Whatever our politics may be, there is something powerful about seeing someone continue to stand when the pressure is greatest. And perhaps that is why this image speaks personally to me. Because life has its own battles. There are moments when we become quiet, when we step away, when circumstances force us to retreat and gather ourselves. But being silent does not mean being defeated. Stepping away does not mean surrendering. And falling does not mean we cannot rise again. So I share this image not because I am Inday Sara, but because today, that raised fist expresses something I also want to say. I am still here. I am standing. I am ready. And to those who have been wondering where I have been... I AM BACK.

The Supreme Court voided the 2024 and 2025 budgets. ₱12 TRILLION declared unconstitutional. Money returned? None. "Operative fact." Anyone charged? None. "Liability is not an issue in this case." PhilHealth's ₱60B too: voided, then "good faith." A crime with no criminals. A violation with no violators. If you or I "insert" ourselves into public funds, there's no good-faith doctrine waiting for us. There's a jail cell. The SC opened the door: file the cases. Ombudsman, DOJ — who are you waiting for? #Budget #Accountability #SelectiveJustice

While China, India, Turkey, Poland, and Russia were stacking gold, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas was selling it. Under this administration’s watch: roughly 55 metric tons offloaded across 2024–early 2025 — among the world’s largest central-bank gold sellers in that stretch. Sold near $2,000–$2,400 an ounce. Gold later blasted past $4,000 — briefly flirted near $5,500. BSP called it “active reserve management.” Governor Remolona even said gold is a “very poor investment.” Maybe. But when the peso was cracking toward ₱64, inflation was ripping families, and governance confidence was already rock-bottom — selling the hard asset while peers were buying is not a flex. It’s a tell. Proceeds stayed in the GIR, they say. Fine. Publish the exact reinvestment trail. Show what those dollars earned versus the gold that kept climbing. Markets don’t care about press lines. They care who sold the hedge — and when. #BSP #Gold #Peso #Governance #Accountability

November 30 is on the ICC calendar. But here’s the blade that cuts deeper: the Supreme Court petitions on jurisdiction and habeas corpus for Rodrigo Duterte are still unresolved — nearly 600 days pending — while a foreign court clocks a trial date. Sword of Damocles. No ruling. Just a countdown. A Republic that has not settled whether the ICC warrant can be enforced here is still watching a former president live under that hanging date. Due process is not a slogan. It starts with answers from the Court Filipinos actually ratified. Resolve the petitions. Then talk about calendars. Process first. Philippines first. No selective blades. #FPRRD #DueProcess #SupremeCourt #ICC #SelectiveJustice

They built dikes that couldn’t hold water — then built a narrative that could. Flood-control insertions. Kickbacks. Ghost projects. PhilHealth money shoved into unprogrammed pots. Supreme Court strikes down budget chunks as unconstitutional. Romualdez’s SC petition? Dismissed as moot — because the plunder case is already in Sandiganbayan. And the loudest “accountability” show still aims at the surnames that threaten 2028. Funny how the people who wrote the insertions get hearings, while the people who left UniTeam get spectacle. Not justice. Targeting. Same architecture. Different heat. If plunder is real, prosecute every surname — not just the ones who spoil the next election storyboard. #FloodControlScandal #SelectiveJustice #Romualdez #Accountability

Billions were pulled from PhilHealth and shoved into unprogrammed pots — health contributions meant for members, redirected into discretionary infrastructure that produced ghost projects and substandard dikes. Critics called it unconstitutional. Patients got the bill. And while that trail was public, the loudest accountability theater aimed elsewhere: confidential funds, Hague optics, and a 2028 narrative that needed someone weakened. Documented diversions on one side. Maximum heat on the other. Same government architecture. Different surnames. Different treatment. Accountability that picks its targets is not accountability. #PhilHealth #BudgetInsertions #SelectiveJustice #Accountability

“Best team ever assembled here since my father’s Cabinet.” Same day. A Cabinet refresh is not a results refresh. Markets don’t vote by oath-taking — and families don’t eat press lines. Accountability starts with outcomes. #CabinetPH #InflationPH #Governance #Accountability

Gates didn’t make MS-DOS. He bought QDOS from Seattle Computer Products for ~$50-75k, renamed it, and licensed it to IBM and everyone else. That’s what built Microsoft. The “I MADE MICROSOFT!” line skips the purchase. @elonmusk

Journalists who “interview” experts by suggesting the preferred answer instead of taking the record. In this ANC Market Edge clip, investment banker Stevie CuUnjieng is asked about demands for Filipino ownership and forced technology transfer in the proposed US-backed Pax Silica hub in New Clark City. He calls the premise **stupid** and **naive**. He asks the obvious question almost no one in media asks: name one major piece of technology Filipinos actually use — computers, phones, cameras — that is Filipino-owned and Filipino-developed. The answer is almost none. He points out what Toyota, Microsoft, and every serious multinational already do: they locate operations for labor, markets, and incentives. They do **not** hand over their intellectual property and trade secrets as the price of entry. Benefits are jobs, supply-chain activity, and the multiplier effect. Technology transfer happens over time by buying, licensing, or building local capacity — not by decree from bishops or activists. The proper journalistic job here is simple: put the expert on the record and let the audience hear the argument. Instead, the framing often slides into “but shouldn’t we demand ownership and tech transfer?” as if that is the neutral baseline. It is not. It is a preferred outcome being floated, then treated as the responsible position while the market realist is positioned as the one who needs to justify himself. This is the same pattern that appears in coverage of investments, industrial policy, and “equity” demands. The expert states the trade-off. The interviewer or the surrounding narrative quietly rewrites the trade-off as optional or immoral. Then audiences are told investors are “packing up” because of governance issues while the same media soft-pedals the very conditions that make capital stay away. An expert witness is not there to be negotiated with into a more palatable soundbite. They are there so the public can hear what people who actually move capital think. When journalists stop doing that and start suggesting the answer, they stop being journalists and start being advocates with microphones. The clip is short. The argument is clear. The refusal to just take the record is the tell. ctto: @boggssph vt.tiktok.com/ZSgW9BsYL/

INVESTORS ARE PACKING UP! Ex-NEDA chief Cielito Habito just said it out loud: the biggest reason capital is leaving the Philippines is not electricity costs or infrastructure. It is rock-bottom confidence in governance. In a BNC interview he stated that “confidence in our governance is very, very low” and that is why “we even have withdrawals of investments right now.” Businesses already here are closing. Foreign investors are moving to Vietnam and Thailand. He pointed straight at the flood-control scandal: when lawmakers themselves are seen “stealing public funds,” why would anyone put money in? The numbers match the warning. - FDI net inflows crashed 23.9% in January–July 2026 to just $4.07 billion (BSP). - The peso has repeatedly hit fresh all-time lows near ₱64 to the dollar this October. - GDP growth slowed to 2.3% in Q2 2026 and is on track to miss even the revised targets. This is what the yellow-pink-Marcos alliance delivered after four years of “unity” and selective accountability theater. They stuffed budget insertions, diverted PhilHealth funds (later ruled unconstitutional), and turned flood control into a cash cow - then spent months punching Sara Duterte in court while their own scandals drove capital out the door. Habito is not a Duterte partisan. He is a former NEDA chief under Ramos stating the obvious: when the people writing the rules are the ones breaking them, investors pack up. The markets already voted. The peso chart and the FDI tables are the receipts. The same crowd that ate their own vomit to cling to power is now watching the capital leave. Attach the infographic. Let the numbers talk.

Fictitious name. Fictitious receipts. The yellow-pink-Marcos alliance’s favorite circus act — the “ghost” who supposedly signed for hundreds of millions in confidential funds. They paraded it for months. Media ate it. Commentators climaxed. They acted like it was the smoking gun that would end the Duterte name. Then the prosecution quietly withdrew the entire confidential funds article **with prejudice**. Dead. Buried. Cannot be revived this term. Piattos is a dead end. They spent weeks punching her face in open court — confidential funds, threats, bribery — then, once the public narrative was set, they dropped three of the four articles. Why? Because they know the remaining case rests on one paid-for forensic opinion from a man whose organizations publicly called for the trial to proceed. No eyewitnesses to actual transactions. No independent verification from the couple’s own records. Just documents the prosecution fed him. They got to smear. They refused to let the defense fully punch back. Classic selective justice from the same crowd that raided PhilHealth, stuffed budget insertions, and watched the peso hit record lows while screaming “accountability.” Meanwhile the numbers refuse to cooperate with their fantasy. Pulse Asia still has her at majority approval and trust — higher than the man in Malacañang. The public watched the circus and largely shrugged. 78% still want her to testify. Defense satisfaction beats the prosecution. The “destroy her” campaign produced noise, not collapse. They allied with the yellows and pinks, ate their own vomit, and thought the Piattos meme plus a friendly forensic accountant would finish the job. Instead they exposed how thin the case was outside the one article they kept. The rest was theater. Inday is still standing. The alliance that tried to bury her is the one looking desperate. The punches landed. The body didn’t fall. And now the dead-end charges are officially dead.

The peso just hit new all-time lows under Marcos Jr. Under Duterte (2016–2022): - Started ~₱47 - Ended ~₱55 - ~17% depreciation over 6 years - Annualized ~2.6% Under Marcos Jr. (2022–present): - Started ~₱55 - Now ~₱63.8–64.1 (late Oct 2026) - ~16% depreciation in just 4.3 years - Faster annualized rate (~3.6%) - Multiple new record lows in 2026 - Weakest annual average on record Same currency. Different results. The peso is weaker now than at any point in modern history, and the slide has accelerated under the current administration. Higher import costs. Higher inflation pressure. Harder for ordinary Filipinos. #USDPHP #Peso #Marcos #Duterte #ExchangeRate

Marcos Jr. and the Dutertes rode UniTeam to a landslide in 2022. Then he turned on them. Once the alliance no longer served him, he opened the door to the same yellow and pink forces that had spent years calling both families thieves—and now they’re all eating their own vomit together. The flood-control and budget scandals aren’t some outsider exposé. Zaldy Co, the man who ran the insertions under Romualdez and the Palace, said it outright: Marcos and Romualdez ordered roughly ₱100 billion in insertions (mostly flood control) and took the kickbacks. Unprogrammed funds ballooned so the executive could play with the money after the budget was passed. The Supreme Court later struck down major portions of the 2024 and 2025 budgets as unconstitutional. That is the administration’s own architecture, not a Duterte invention. While that was happening, billions were pulled from PhilHealth and shoved into those same unprogrammed pots. Health contributions meant for members were raided to fund discretionary infrastructure that produced ghost projects and substandard dikes. Critics called it unconstitutional. The people who needed the money for medicine and hospitals got the bill instead. And what did the yellow-pink-Marcos alliance do with the outrage? They aimed it at the Dutertes. Sara’s confidential funds—approved and released under the same government—became an impeachment spectacle the moment she refused to stay in line. Rodrigo Duterte was arrested and shipped to The Hague right when the political rupture peaked. The institutions, the leaks, the media cycles, and the international case all lined up against the family that had actually delivered results on drugs and infrastructure, while the people who wrote the insertions and diverted the PhilHealth money faced softer treatment. This is what “unity” looked like: Marcos absorbing the old yellow and pink networks that spent years calling his family thieves, then using their playbook of selective cases, COA theater, and international pressure once the alliance no longer served him. They are eating their own vomit—recycling the same anti-Duterte tactics they once deployed against each other, now aimed at anyone who threatens the 2028 narrative. Flood control ghosts, budget insertions, and a PhilHealth raid are documented. The timing of the highest-profile cases against the Dutertes is also documented. One is treated as a systemic failure of the current government. The other is sold as justice. The difference is who still needs to be weakened before the next election. #Marcos #YellowPink #FloodControlScandal #PhilHealth #BudgetInsertions #SelectiveJustice #EatYourOwnVomit

DILG just put a ₱50M bounty on Bato and called him armed and dangerous. Not because the ICC paid for it. Because we volunteered to be their collection agency. Vassal status: unlocked. Glove removal: complete. One-week surrender window: optional. Next update: will the bounty come with ICC loyalty points?