PBBM: We are bleeding now, but we will heal very quickly
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said the country is going through a “difficulty” now as he likened the fight against corruption to “a very major surgery…to excise a cancer.”
“When you have to excise a cancer out of such a complicated system, you need to do some very major surgery,” Mr. Marcos during his year-end fellowship with the Malacañang Press Corps Wednesday evening.
“And to do that, and when you do that, you will bleed. And that is what we had to go through. We had to go through that.”
“We have to go all through that pain, go through the difficulty, go through the anguish the country is going through now. But we are Filipinos. We may be bleeding now, but we will also heal very, very quickly,” the President added.
Despite the difficulty and public frustration, Mr. Marcos said the effort was necessary.
“I hope that once we go through this, we will be able to look back on this and say, ‘Okay, what happened was difficult, but it had to be done, and the suffering we went through was worth it for the result we achieved.’ That is what we are hoping for,” he said.
The President also appealed to journalists to help in combating disinformation, which he said had become “damaging” and now rivals legitimate reporting in public influence.
“Fake news has taken too much space,” he said.
“Government needs the help of all media so people know the truth and are not misled by conspiracy theories,” Mr. Marcos added.
Since the President disclosed the questionable flood control projects during his State of the Nation Address in July, the government has created the Independent Commission for Infrastructure tasked to probe the alleged anomalies.
Initial cases have also been filed before the Sandiganbayan while the Anti-Money Laundering Council has frozen assets worth P11.7 billion that are related to the questionable projects.
Editor’s Note: This is an updated article. Originally posted with the headline: “PBBM likens fake news battle to excising cancer”
