By the standards of economic policymaking, the administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is not doing nothing. It is, in fact, doing something very Filipino: reaching for familiar levers — subsidies, tax suspensions, conservation appeals — in the face of a gathering storm.

But crises are not defeated by policy alone. They are managed — or mismanaged — by perception.

And right now, perception is slipping.

A government reacting — but not reassuring.

The Philippine government is scrambling to cushion the blow of surging global oil prices triggered by geopolitical conflict. Congress has moved to give the president emergency authority to suspend fuel excise taxes, a measure explicitly designed to prevent inflation from spiraling.

At the same time, Malacañang has ordered energy conservation across agencies and is considering targeted subsidies for transport and agriculture — a tacit admission that the country’s heavy reliance on imported oil leaves it dangerously exposed.

These are not irrational policies. They are textbook short-term stabilization tools.

But they are also reactive, piecemeal, and — most critically — poorly narrated.

The optics problem: leadership as signal

In times of looming economic distress, the public does not just assess policy. It reads the leader.

Which is why Marcos’s recent video address matters more than the Palace may realize. A visibly thinner, fatigued president speaking to a nation bracing for economic pain does not project control. It projects strain.

This is not about aesthetics. It is about signaling.

Political communication research has long established that leader vitality and clarity are proxies for state capacity in the public mind. As Murray Edelman argued in The Symbolic Uses of Politics, political authority depends as much on symbolic reassurance as on material action. When symbols falter, anxiety fills the void.

Similarly, in crisis communication literature — particularly W. Timothy Coombs’ Situational Crisis Communication Theory — governments are advised to project competence, consistency, and control to reduce public uncertainty. Mixed or weakened signals amplify perceived risk, even when policies are sound.

In other words, a tired-looking president during a moment of national unease is not a trivial detail. It is a multiplier of fear.

A familiar Philippine pattern

There is an uncomfortable historical echo here.

The Philippines has experienced this before—times when economic hardship aligns with political distrust. The 2025–2026 protest wave over corruption and public spending—the so-called Trillion Peso March—already shows a population ready to question the credibility of their government.

Overlay that with rising inflation risks, energy vulnerabilities, and global instability, and the country is entering what political economists call a “confidence-sensitive phase” — where expectations, not just fundamentals, drive outcomes.

Growth forecasts stay somewhat optimistic, exceeding 5 percent. However, these forecasts don’t reassure markets or households as daily expenses climb and leadership remains uncertain.

The missing piece: narrative discipline

What stands out is not that the Marcos administration lacks policies, but that it lacks narrative discipline.

Compare this with best practices identified in governance studies:

Consistency of messaging (Coombs, 2007): Governments need to provide clear, repeated explanations of both the problem and the plan.

Visible command presence (Boin et al., The Politics of Crisis Management): Leaders must project control, even when uncertainty is high.

Preemptive framing (Edelman, 1964): The state must establish the crisis before the public does.

By these standards, the current approach is lacking. The administration seems to be describing actions rather than telling a clear story.

The result: Filipinos are left to piece it all together themselves — rising fuel prices, conservation orders, emergency powers — without a unifying story that reassures them the situation is under control.

A deeper risk than inflation

The true danger goes beyond just economics.
It’s a psychological matter.

Once public confidence erodes, even well-designed policies lose their impact. Consumers reduce spending. Businesses postpone investment. Political noise grows louder. What starts as an external shock turns into a self-sustaining domestic slowdown.

This is how economic pressure escalates into a political crisis.

What leadership should look like now?

Currently, the Marcos administration needs less improvising and more orchestrating.
That means: a strong, healthy, and visibly commanding president — not just in substance but also symbolically. A unified, disciplined economic narrative explaining what is happening, what is being done, and what Filipinos should expect. And a shift from reactive measures to proactive reassurance.

Because during crises, citizens do not simply ask, “What is the government doing?”
They ask, “Is the government in control?”

At the moment, the answer is becoming less clear.

And in a fragile economy, ambiguity itself becomes a form of instability.