Filipinos do not need to be told that our politics is built on families. We have lived under dynasties so long that kinship has become our unwritten constitution. Blood is supposed to be thicker than truth, thicker than principle, thicker than country. That is why what Senator Imee Marcos did on the INC stage is not merely a political rupture. It is cultural trespass. It violates the central commandment of Philippine public life: family first, family always, family above everything.
Imee knew exactly what she was doing. She accused the sitting President, her own brother, and First Lady Liza Araneta Marcos of being drug addicts. She did it before an audience of hundreds of thousands under the watchful permission of the Iglesia ni Cristo hierarchy. She did it without hesitation, without euphemism, and without blinking. She detonated a political bomb inside a religious sanctuary. In a country where public loyalty and private resentment often keep each other at a respectful distance, this was an act of open rebellion.
The question now is not whether the accusations are true. The question is whether Filipinos will punish her for breaching the sacred code of Filipino family unity, or reward her for breaking it in the name of a higher truth.
For many Filipinos, family is the last stable institution left. Politics is corrupt, the economy is fragile, and government is unreliable. But family endures. It is the safety net, the moral anchor, the one place where betrayal is unthinkable. When Imee stood on that stage and called out her own blood, she crossed a cultural boundary few dare to touch. And because that boundary is so deep, her act carries both immense danger and immense power.
Some will see her speech as treachery. To them, Imee violated the unwritten law that sibling disagreements stay inside the house. She exposed the family in public. She embarrassed the clan that built her. For Marcos loyalists, this was unforgivable. For Ilocanos steeped in the mythology of the Marcos dynasty, it was an act of sacrilege. The blowback will be real, especially among those who still cling to the narrative of the unified, unbreakable Marcos family.
But others will see the opposite. They will see courage. They will see a woman finally telling the truth about a brother who has governed through indecision, denial, and drift. They will see a sister risking everything because, in her words, she can bear to see him lose power but not lose his life. They will see authenticity in a political field full of calculation. And they will see that in a time of corruption scandals, collapsing institutions, and public rage, Imee is the first insider with enough rank and bloodline to pierce the palace shield.
The INC stage matters profoundly. INC is not a random venue. It is a religious bloc with historical sway over elections. By allowing Imee to speak, its leadership effectively sanctioned a public humiliation of the sitting President. That act alone signals tectonic political shifts. Religious neutrality is often a mask. Silence is endorsement. Allowing the speech without intervention was a choice, and in Philippine politics, choices are never accidental.
But the deepest question lies with the Filipino people. We say we love truth, but we worship family. We condemn corruption, but we excuse it when the perpetrator is our own. We are suspicious of whistleblowers unless we personally like their motives. Imee Marcos has placed the country in a cultural stress test. She has dared to break the family code in a society that believes family is sacred. She has chosen confrontation over cohesion, exposure over loyalty, rupture over ritual.
And so we wait. Will Filipinos recoil from the breach or embrace the bravery? Will they view her as a traitor to her blood or a truth-teller to her nation? Will she be punished for speaking out or rewarded for saying what many already whisper?
Filipinos say that when family turns on family, the wound never heals. Perhaps. But sometimes a wound is what forces a poisoned body to finally confront its sickness.
The cost to Imee Marcos is enormous. But the cost to the nation may be even greater. Because if the only people who can reveal the truth are those willing to break their own bloodlines, then the real problem is not Imee. The real problem is a political system where loyalty is prized above integrity, silence above accountability, and family above country.
And in that system, Imee may pay a price. But so will we.