30/11/2025
In the midst of mounting scandals on anomalous flood control projects and the brazen plunder of public funds, the national government now parades a handful of arrests, as if targeting small-scale actors could mask the deep-seated corruption festering at the very heart of the state.
The Marcos Jr. administration trumpets the arrest of several mid-level DPWH personnel and the manhunt for a few more, framing it as evidence of decisive leadership. But these arrests represent only the lowest strata of a corruption network whose apex stands firmly within the halls of Congress, the DPWH national leadership, and the presidential circle itself. We must confront an uncomfortable truth: this is not a genuine anti-corruption campaign. It is a calculated performance and an attempt to convince the public that the state is “taking action,” while those with the influence to manipulate bidding processes, funnel public funds to their own companies, and engineer ghost projects, remain beyond the reach of the law, all under the protection of the highest office in the land.
Amid these choreographed displays of “decisive action,” we condemn the parallel crackdown unfolding on our streets: one that now targets not only small-scale bureaucrats but the Filipino masses themselves. As communities, workers, students, and sectoral organizations peaceably assemble to voice legitimate grievances, hundreds are being arrested or charged with alleged violations of B.P. 880, their constitutional rights treated as criminal acts.
This growing wave of B.P. 880 cases reveals a disturbing pattern: public demonstrations are policed with the same zeal once used in tokhang-style operations, where the easiest to apprehend are punished first, and the most powerful offenders remain untouched.
The arrests send a chilling message — that dissent will be met not with dialogue but with prosecution — while those most responsible for plunder and systemic corruption continue to enjoy protection at the highest levels. In a system where the most corrupt receive the most cover-up, these B.P. 880 charges expose selective enforcement as an instrument not of justice but of suppression, wielded to silence the powerless and shield the privileged.
Corruption has never been a victimless crime. It steals from the poor, robs communities of safety, and deepens the inequality that fractures our nation. And when state leaders feign outrage while refusing to hold their own accountable, they become complicit in the very crimes they publicly denounce.
Every peso stolen from public funds is a peso stolen from disaster survivors, from students deprived of classrooms, from patients denied medicine, from farmers abandoned in crises, from generations robbed of opportunity. These are not abstract losses; they are real injuries borne by the Filipino people.
Corruption weakens democracy. It cements inequality. It erodes trust. It institutionalizes impunity.
And when the state implements accountability only against the powerless, corruption becomes even more entrenched because it is tacitly sanctioned by those who benefit most.
As law students, we cannot allow selective accountability to be normalized. Our legal education teaches us that justice is indivisible and that the rule of law demands equality, not theatrics.
We reject the narrative that arresting small-scale actors equates to justice. Their arrests, while necessary if warranted by evidence, represent only the lowest rungs of a vast hierarchy of plunder.
When the state chooses to prosecute only minor actors while preserving the impunity of those with political capital, it distorts the very foundations of legal accountability. Selective enforcement creates a dangerous precedent: that the law bends not to truth or evidence, but to power, influence, and convenience. If we accept this, we accept a justice system that protects the powerful and sacrifices the powerless. We refuse to be complicit in legitimizing such a fractured system.
We condemn the deliberate shielding of high-ranking officials, political elites, and even the President, despite being implicated in the very networks of corruption he claims to oppose. The administration’s rhetoric of reform collapses under the weight of its own hypocrisy.
This unequal treatment is not accidental; it is a calculated preservation of political alliances, a safeguarding of dynastic power, and only reveals a government more invested in controlling the narrative than confronting the truth. A government that selectively prosecutes is not fighting corruption, it is protecting it. Until the highest-ranking officials, including the President himself, face scrutiny and the same legal standards demanded of ordinary public servants, any claim to accountability rings hollow.
We cannot and must not remain silent in the face of selective, performative governance masquerading as reform. Justice that stops at the bottom is not justice; it is an escape hatch for the elite. The law must pierce through every layer of this architecture of plunder. A government that claims to champion accountability must prosecute those who sit in Congress, in the Cabinet, and even in the Office of the President itself. The state cannot claim righteousness while avoiding even the possibility of investigating its own highest officials. Anything less is a mockery of justice.
We stand in unity with all sectors calling for transparency, truth, and systemic reform. We join the clamor of workers, farmers, fisherfolk, students, teachers, church leaders, and human rights advocates who demand an end to the culture of impunity that has long permeated governance. We commit to supporting campaigns, investigations, fact-finding missions, and mass actions that seek to unveil the full breadth of corruption, no matter how high the trail of accountability leads.
We reaffirm our role as future lawyers of the people — a role that carries both privilege and responsibility: to challenge impunity wherever it appears, however powerful its agents may be, to expose injustices that impoverish communities, distort institutions, and endanger lives, and to confront corruption with unrelenting resolve, guided by law but strengthened by conscience.
And above all, we reaffirm our duty to defend the dignity and welfare of the Filipino people.
LAW STUDENTS, ALL RISE AGAINST CORRUPTION!
LAW STUDENTS, ALL RISE FOR ACCOUNTABILITY!
𝗟𝗔𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗡𝗚 𝗦𝗔𝗡𝗚𝗞𝗢𝗧, 𝗗𝗔𝗣𝗔𝗧 𝗠𝗔𝗡𝗔𝗚𝗢𝗧!
𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗖𝗢𝗦 𝗦𝗜𝗡𝗚𝗜𝗟𝗜𝗡, 𝗗𝗨𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗧𝗘 𝗣𝗔𝗡𝗔𝗚𝗨𝗧𝗜𝗡!
𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗖𝗢𝗦-𝗗𝗨𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗧𝗘, 𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗜𝗚𝗡!
