Fractured Soul, Fresh Breath: A Call to Clarity

When the protests end, when the streets are swept and the placards are packed away, we are left not with silence but with a question: what do we do now?

The power in the paperwork. Lawyer-lecturer Atty. Jenny Reyes discussed the role of the courts in the nation’s rage over the flood of corruption that rankles citizens to no end. (Photo: Chlod Wikimedia Commons)

The noise fades, but the ache remains — the ache of a nation whose soul has been chipped away by ghost projects, unbuilt dikes, and unreturned pesos.

The forum that the Monday Circle held at the Westin Hotel today was a sobering reminder that justice in our country moves at the speed of paperwork, not public outrage.

Lawyer-lecturer Atty. Jenny Reyes discussed the role of the courts in the nation’s rage over the flood of corruption that rankles citizens to no end. She said that courts take months, even years, before a verdict is reached.

Whistleblowers face a gauntlet of legal steps before they can even be protected. The longer the wait, the more trust erodes.

Atty. Jennifer Reyes, the Monday Circle’s guest at this week's forum, is a distinguished legal professional and law professor who has authored several editions of Constitutional Law I and Constitutional Law II. (Photo: Atty. Jennifer Reyes)

Reyes also reminded the forum participants — stockbrokers, businessmen, journalists, and bankers — that cases can potentially be filed, for example, regarding the delivery of cash to religious entities.

Discussion also touched on why banks failed to flag the withdrawal of huge sums of money, and on the lack of KYC protocols at casinos, especially in light of reports that Bulacan engineers entered with fake identity cards.

That is why we must insist on transparency now — not at the end of litigation.

Government data on flood-control funds, on contract performance, on penalties collected must be made open and accessible, not buried in audit reports few will ever read.

Sunlight cannot wait for the slow turn of the legal wheel.

We must also reclaim the narrative from the margins. The provinces, the overlooked barangays, the quiet towns where floods rise first — they must not be left out of the story. If their voices are heard, the nation remembers that it is more than Manila.

And finally, we must breathe hope into this fractured soul. Hope is not the denial of pain but the courage to face it.

Hope says: we can still choose reform over rage, vigilance over violence, justice over vendetta.

Atty. Reyes with the stockbrokers, businessmen, journalists, and bankers, who make up the Monday Circle.

For it is not the storm that erodes the soul of a nation, but the slow surrender to cynicism. Let this moment be not our breaking point but our turning point — where we move from fury to fidelity, from protest to purpose.

And perhaps, when the books are finally balanced and the floodwaters recede, we will find that the cracks in our national soul were not just wounds but doorways — openings through which the light of meaning could enter