CARTOON BY: AARON PAUL C. CARIL
EDITORIAL
When institutions become afraid
There is a pattern emerging in our politics, and it is as unmistakable as it is troubling. In the span of just a few weeks, the House majority has declared that it will not support any impeachment complaint against the President; the Department of Energy has moved to penalize a politically connected businessman; the Department of Justice has confirmed that as many as 200 individuals—including dozens of lawmakers—are implicated in the flood-control anomaly; and a bloc in the House has moved to expel one of its own, Representative Francisco “Kiko” Barzaga, for alleged “disloyalty.”
These events may look unrelated. They are not. They form a single, coherent picture of institutions acting not from constitutional duty, but from fear, factional pressure, and political survival.
When the majority bloc announces—pre-emptively—that it will not support any impeachment complaint against the President, it is not making a legal judgment. It is making a political calculation. Impeachment is a constitutional mechanism for accountability. But a Congress under investigation for a ₱100-billion flood-control scandal cannot credibly wield that mechanism without exposing itself. The Department of Justice has already confirmed that at least 67 lawmakers allegedly have prohibited contractor interests. The investigation is widening. In such a climate, the House’s sudden allergy to impeachment is not a mystery. A legislature with its own vulnerabilities will not pick a fight with the Executive, especially when the Executive controls the very agencies conducting the investigations.
The Department of Energy’s move to fine a prominent figure in the renewable-energy sector is being hailed by some as a sign of regulatory strength. But timing matters. When regulators begin flexing power at the same moment Congress retreats from its constitutional duties, the public must ask whether this is a principled assertion of the rule of law or a selective display of force in a season of political realignment. Institutions that feel exposed often overcorrect. They punish where they can, and they avoid where they must.
The attempt to expel Representative Francisco “Kiko” Barzaga is another symptom of institutional vulnerability. Instead of confronting the flood-control scandal with transparency, or addressing the public’s legitimate questions about accountability, the House turns inward—disciplining its own members for political disloyalty while refusing to exercise its constitutional role as a check on the Executive. This is not the behavior of a confident institution. It is the behavior of an institution under pressure.
What ties these threads together is a simple truth: institutions that are afraid cannot be independent. A Congress that fears exposure cannot credibly investigate the Executive. A regulatory agency that enforces rules selectively cannot claim neutrality. A political system that punishes internal dissent but shields external power is not practicing accountability—it is practicing survival. The Constitution did not design our institutions to survive. It designed them to serve.
The public does not expect perfection from its leaders. But it does expect courage—the courage to investigate wrongdoing even when it is inconvenient, the courage to apply rules evenly even when it is politically costly, and the courage to uphold constitutional duty even when it threatens one’s own alliances. If our institutions continue to act from fear, the public will eventually ask the question no democracy wants to hear: who, then, is left to protect us?
The country deserves institutions that are not afraid of the truth. It deserves leaders who understand that accountability is not a weapon, but a promise. And it deserves a Congress that remembers that its first loyalty is not to any faction, but to the Republic.