It has been 2 years since the 2022 elections period flooded—and in a way terrorized—both the physical and virtual streets of the Philippines.

Where in almost every corner of your neighborhood, you’ll spot plastered posters, murals, campaign material, or crusading supporters clad in red-green or pink-green or whatever color combination they used as aliases for their chosen leaders. Where in almost every corner of the internet, citizens treated comment sections as battlegrounds, themselves being the troops who’ll put their lives at stake for the goal of leading their beloved country to victory—which is in reality just the goal of proving themselves right and superior just because they aim to vote for a particular candidate. Bombarding also the walls of the cyberworld were, of course, the endless barrage of misinformation that the Philippines was treated to and what ultimately led us to our political demise.

Those two years passing are also equivalent to the fact that we Filipinos have, sadly, been under the Marcos’ administration for the same amount of time. Though what’s even more distressing is the fact that now the Philippines has reached the part of the cycle where we’re once more gifted the access to choose our leaders, the reign of false news and information has still not come to a halt.

The COMELEC-approved list of aspirants for the upcoming 2025 elections—both for local and national—has been an eccentric bunch, to say the least. For instance, senatorial candidates range from television personalities like Willie Revillame to the FBI-wanted and self-appointed “son of God” Apollo Quiboloy, or how Manila local elections welcome the presence of striving councilor Rosmar Tan, a TikTok ‘entrepreneur’ infamous for distributing unauthorized cosmetic products, among other controversies.

Evident now is how public service has suddenly become the latest hotspot for celebrities—and in some cases, criminals—to garner misplaced attention and recognition, leaving serious matters like that of an election period looking like an utter joke to the masses. However, a more urgent concern is that in spite of the election-turned-farce that we’ll face, fellow countrymen will still get baited into voting for incompetency as the existence of ‘trolls’ and widespread falsehoods produced by false experts cease to go extinct. In a time where credibility seems to be the furthest thing people consider nowadays for future lawmakers and bureaucrats, will we ever escape the frustrating pattern of choosing the wrong individuals to gain complete power over us?

If our time during the past election period has taught us anything, it’s that in moments when we have the privilege to settle for the people who’ll lead our country to prosperity, we should have had grabbed the opportunity to achieve such instead of being blinded by false promises of ‘unity’, especially when the proof of impotence was lain right in front of us for all to see. Be reminded that no matter how persistent the Filipinos’ sense of regret may grow, our capability for developing a better nation will remain out of our reach.