A broad coalition of church leaders is set to stage a massive rally on EDSA on September 21 to demand accountability over what they described as “systemic and trillion-peso-scale corruption” in the country’s flood control projects—an issue recently thrust into the national spotlight by President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. himself.
The Church Leaders Council for National Transformation announced Friday that the protest, dubbed the Trillion Peso March, will begin at 2 p.m. at the historic EDSA stretch. Participants are encouraged to wear white as a symbol of unity and purity in governance.
Organizers chose September 21—the 53rd anniversary of Martial Law under Marcos’ late father—as a symbolic date, underscoring that the fight against abuse of power must remain alive decades after the dictatorship was toppled by the 1986 People Power Revolution.
Marcos’ call sparks nationwide reckoning
The protest comes on the heels of Marcos’ fiery State of the Nation Address, where he called for a sweeping investigation into politicians and government officials allegedly enriching themselves through anomalous public works. The President has since conducted surprise inspections of flood control projects, personally uncovering ghost and substandard structures in Bulacan and Mindoro.
“These discoveries are only the tip of the iceberg,” a Palace official earlier said, noting that the President has ordered the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), Department of Justice (DOJ), and other oversight agencies to hunt down perpetrators and recover stolen funds.
Church leaders said these revelations emboldened them to organize a people’s march to keep public pressure high.
‘Corruption is not just theft, it is sin’
“We, members of the Church Leaders Council for National Transformation, together with other religious organizations, are united in prayer and action to condemn the rampant corruption that is destroying the nation’s flood control systems,” the group declared in a statement written in Filipino.
They lamented that billions of pesos have been wasted on ghost projects and substandard infrastructure, worsening floods and deepening poverty.
“This kind of corruption is not merely theft but a grave sin that robs the poor of their homes, farmers of their crops, and children of their future,” the statement read.
Call for unity and moral leadership
The church council urged all Filipinos—priests, laypeople, civic leaders, and ordinary citizens—to stand together in demanding transparency, honest governance, and integrity from public officials.
“Let justice roll down like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream,” they quoted from Amos 5:24. “May the Lord who drove out the merchants from the Temple be the one to cleanse our people. Let us act together, with unity and hope.”
The church-led protest will follow a growing wave of public outrage: just this Friday, thousands of students from the University of the Philippines staged a walkout to decry alleged anomalies in flood control and other infrastructure projects.