Speech by President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. at the Malacañang Press Corps Year-end Fellowship

All right, thank you very much—I still get confused, ES Ralph Recto. And to all of our partners in the Malacañang Press Corps, merry Christmas to you all and welcome to our annual get together that we do every Christmas. And I just came up here to say to you: Don’t complain, I gave you lots of stories this year. Hindi kayo nagkulang, hindi kayo nagkulang sa bomba, sa exposè, sa iskandalo.

Well, you know, the truth of the matter is, it really has been a difficult time because we, I knew that what we were starting would really be disruptive and would really—but we are trying precisely to change the entire system.

And when you have to excise a cancer out of such a complicated system, you need to do some very major surgery. And to do that, when you do that, you will bleed. And that is what we had to go through. We had to go through that. And I am sorry that people suffered because of it, but it had to be done, otherwise, we will do things the same way that we have always done, that the things that we have discovered that are being done for the last three decades will just continue.

So, we have to go through, go through that pain, go through difficulty, go through the anguish that the country is going through now. But we are Filipinos. We may be bleeding now, but we will also heal very, very quickly.

And between myself and those who are helping me and advising me, I think we know how. So, it’s not as if we are lost and we do not know what we are going to do. We know what we are going to do. We know what we are going to do, and we will continue this campaign against corruption. We will continue our campaign on this abuse and this entitlement that has shocked everyone, myself included.

So, I hope that once we go through this, and I know it will be done, once we go through this, that we will be able to look back on this and say, ‘Okay, mahirap iyong nangyari pero kailangan gawin at worth it iyong dusa na pinagdaanan natin para sa naging resulta.’ That is what we are hoping for. There is very little time to do it but I really think, I mean, if we work 24/7 like we always have, I think we can do it.

So, I thank all the members of the press corps, Malacañang Press Corps, because you have been there with us all the way. And this is not an easy thing to explain to the average citizen because they’re not concerned about structural change and ideological ideas; they are just concerned about their everyday lives. But you have been there to help us, to explain and make people understand what we are trying to do. We need to continue to do that because we owe it to everyone. Iyan ang trabaho natin. Hindi naman puwede, ‘Basta, basta, huwag na kayo maingay. Basta tama itong ginagawa namin.’ Hindi puwede iyon, kaya’t kailangan namin kayo na sinasabi ninyo, ‘Hindi, ganito ang nangyayari, ginagawa nila ito dahil sa ganito.’

Siyempre there will be people who do not agree, but that is the nature of politics. Like I said, nobody anywhere won an election with a hundred percent result because there will always be opposition. So that’s fine.

Our big problem, and this one talaga I need your help, I don’t know how to approach it—well, we have many, many ideas. But what we need really to work together on is the fake news. The things that are going on—kayo you are journalists, right? You develop your contacts, you study, you say what’s happening. And you do this for what, ten years? You learn many things, hindi ba? And so, kung ano iyong sinusulat ninyo, kung ano ang pinapalabas ninyo, comes from that experience, comes from that knowledge, coming from that wisdom that you have already acquired over that long period of hard work.

But now suddenly, your writings, your opinions are equal in importance and credibility to this crazy conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact. And that’s why we don’t—we really have to work on this very, very hard because it has taken too much of the space. Fake news has taken too much of the space.

In the beginning, we thought it was funny, it was entertaining, but now it’s become damaging. And that is something that we have to be concerned about. And that’s why I’m saying, we need your help. Government needs the help of all the media to try and explain to people that you have to be more discerning about what you read and what you believe and what you take on.

And that is a challenge, I think, for us in the future and it’s not an easy one. It’s not an easy challenge but we have to continue to try and do it because it is important that people know the truth; the people know what is happening truly, that the people are not led into these crazy mind games people have been playing without any connection anymore to reality.

That is what I think we all have to work together. And so we hope that the cooperation that we have established, the partnership that we have established, goodwill that we all have earned with each other I hope that can be applied to this problem that we face and thereby giving us a much better, much more logical kind of discussion. And that is the only, that will only be to the good of our country and to the good of our people.

So, I thank you for this partnership that we have fostered over the last three and a half years, and let us make it even stronger because we now are faced with the challenge that we have to work together to address. But thank you for all you have done. Thank you for all your efforts and I know we work you all very hard but, and I know that it is also worth it.

Maraming, maraming salamat sa inyo. Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon.

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