Kingfisher

// John Lenard Romano | The L

As the new year begins, our habit of sorting what stays and what goes should never extend to our political collective memories.

Piles of controversies defined the country in 2025, from irregularities in the national budget; flood control anomalies projects; Sara Duterte’s dismissed impeachment, unresolved case of the missing sabungeros, and the arrest of former president Rodrigo Duterte under an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant has left the nation cluttered with issues no one dared touch.

And yet as we start anew and declutter in 2026, none of the mentioned state issues has reached definitive resolution as public attention shifts too quickly, outrage fades, and collective amnesia takes root; normalizing negligence that allows those in power to escape accountability.

These events may have initially ignited anger and frustration and even mobilizing thousands in the streets and online spaces, experience repeatedly shows that forgetting and decluttering eventually becomes the easier option as the year closes.

What makes this amnesia even more concerning is that Filipinos tend to practice it willingly, turning nationalistic concerns into shared decisions of moving on towards the next big issue.

To be fair, Filipinos are often praised for their resilience and forgivefulness, yet I argue that this nature, while admirable, also serves as a societal loophole that leaders exploit to evade accountability, leaving issues unresolved and buried.

Such forgetfulness often arises from exhaustion, as Filipinos struggle to keep up with overlapping clutters of piled up crises and overwhelming problems with no clear end or solution.

To truly clean the system and punish those accountable, sustained memory and collective actions are vital, refusing to let issues that demand attention and justice be ignored or forgotten.

This year, some messes are not meant to be swept away, for they are clutters that must remain visible until accountability is demanded and achieved.

// layout by John Saavedra

#YouthPoints #TheKingfisherSLSU