The president’s trust problem is not opposition attacks or Senate drama. It is the growing perception that he is absent from the economic and political struggles that matter most to ordinary Filipinos.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. believes his administration’s trust problem stems from political noise. Speaking to reporters during his visit to Japan, he blamed unnamed “obstructionists” for turning up the heat in the country’s politics and argued that those responsible for creating the noise should be the ones to stop it.

That explanation may be politically convenient. It is also dangerously incomplete.

The problem with Marcos’ declining public trust numbers is not that there is too much political noise. It is that too many Filipinos have stopped hearing anything that sounds like concern.

For months, Malacañang has struggled to explain why public confidence in the administration appears to be softening despite an endless stream of ribbon-cuttings, inaugurations, investment announcements, foreign trips, and official ceremonies. The Palace seems convinced that the problem is messaging.

The problem is perception.

And perception, in politics, is reality.

Marcos may indeed be working. Few would argue that the government has stopped functioning. The more important question is whether Filipinos feel that the president is working for them.

Increasingly, many do not.

Politics is not merely about governance. It is about malasakit—the deeply Filipino expectation that leaders must visibly share in their people’s burdens. Citizens do not merely evaluate policies and programs. They evaluate concern. They ask whether their leaders understand what they are going through.

That is where Marcos is struggling.

The president’s public appearances often project activity without urgency. He is seen inaugurating bridges, attending ceremonies, meeting dignitaries, and delivering speeches. These are legitimate functions of government. Yet many Filipinos struggle to connect those images to the economic anxieties that dominate their daily lives.

When families are worrying about fuel prices, grocery costs, and shrinking purchasing power, another infrastructure inauguration does not necessarily communicate relief.

It communicates distance.

The administration’s communications strategy has become overwhelmingly tactical rather than strategic. It documents presidential activity but rarely translates that activity into a compelling answer to the question ordinary citizens ask every day:

How does this help me?

The result is a presidency that appears busy but is not always responsive.

The missed opportunities are striking. When fears of another oil price shock emerged, Filipinos needed to see leadership actively managing the crisis. Imagine the political impact of Marcos convening major oil companies alongside his energy secretary to publicly demand measures to cushion consumers from rising prices.

Imagine him gathering food manufacturers, traders and economic managers to discuss keeping basic commodities affordable.

Imagine images of intervention rather than inauguration.

Action matters. But visible action matters even more in democratic politics.

The same problem became glaringly evident during the recent Senate upheaval.

As rival factions battled for control of one of the country’s most important democratic institutions, many Filipinos looked to Malacañang for direction. Some expected the president to act as a unifying figure. Others expected him to lend support to the side that appeared to enjoy greater public sympathy.

Whether those expectations were fair is beside the point.

What matters is that the president appeared largely absent from the conversation.

At a moment when political instability threatened to consume the national agenda, Marcos projected neither leadership nor urgency. The administration seemed content to watch events unfold as the Senate descended into a political spectacle that increasingly resembled reality television rather than a functioning democratic institution.

In politics, silence is never neutral.

When leaders remain invisible during moments of conflict, citizens rarely interpret that absence as prudence. More often, they interpret it as weakness, indifference, or irrelevance.

That is precisely the perception problem now confronting Marcos.

Many Filipinos increasingly see a president who observes events rather than shapes them. Fairly or unfairly, his reluctance to visibly engage in the country’s most contentious political crises has contributed to an image of a leader drifting toward lame-duck status long before the end of his term.

The danger is not merely reputational.

The longer the administration appears disengaged from political and economic crises, the more citizens conclude that nobody is actually steering the ship of state. Every day that Senate infighting dominates headlines without visible presidential leadership reinforces the perception that Marcos does not particularly care whether the spectacle drags the country’s institutions down with it.

That perception may be inaccurate.

But politics is not judged by intentions. It is judged by what people see.

And what many Filipinos see today is a president who is physically present at ceremonies yet politically absent during moments that demand leadership.

This is why Marcos’ trust problem cannot be solved by more press releases, more photo opportunities or more announcements of completed projects.

He needs a new strategic communications doctrine.

Not a propaganda campaign. Not a branding exercise.

A doctrine rooted in visible leadership, crisis ownership and demonstrable malasakit.

The president must stop merely communicating what he is doing and start showing why it matters. He must be seen confronting crises as they happen, arbitrating conflicts before they spiral and visibly fighting for the public interest when economic pressures intensify.

In short, he must communicate not activity but purpose.

Because Filipinos are no longer asking whether the president is working.

They are asking whether he cares.

And until Malacañang learns how to convincingly answer that question, no amount of blaming political noise will quiet the growing silence of public trust.