The wheels are falling off the Marcos administration.

When prominent entrepreneur Anton Que and his driver, Armanie Pabillo, were killed in cold blood even after paying the ransom, the country’s most distinguished business organizations knew it was time to speak up. If only they had done so earlier.

Like many people, they wrongly read that the devastating blows that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., in cahoots with his cousin, Speaker Martin Romualdez, unleashed against the Duterte family were just part of a grand scheme to deny Vice President Inday Sara Duterte what most concede is a sure win in 2028. This is unsurprising because that was the message Marcos' minions wanted and continued to deliver.

The elite has traditionally been a bastion of conservatism for obvious reasons. They need governments and administrations least, so they assume, most of the time correctly, that they have little to gain from casting their lots on political forces. What the present elite misreads, or perhaps underestimates, is the Marcos family’s single-minded obsession with perpetuating itself in power.

So they were not listening when former President Rodrigo Duterte raged against the counterfeit people's initiative. They were uninterested when Vice President Sara was forced to resign as Secretary of Education. They were unimpressed when she defended herself from baseless allegations of corruption on the confidential fund and did not raise a howl when the House of Representatives railroaded her impeachment.

The demand of the Hakbang ng Maisug for transparency, accountability, peace, and security fell on deaf ears—even the continuing call for PBBM to undergo a hair follicle drug test, which Atty. Vic Rodriguez has been pushing did not seem important. What is more about the anomalous transfer of state funds to Maharlika Investment? The dubious process involving the 2025 annual budget led to the petition filed by Atty. Vic and Cong. Isidro Ungab and the unmitigated raid of the nation’s coffers for the monumental payouts named AKAP, AICS, and TUPAD never seen before in the nation’s history?

Did anybody hear anything from the most influential and powerful traders when fPRRD was brazenly kidnapped right before the eyes of the nation and shipped for what his lawyer called “illegal detention” by the International Criminal Court in The Hague?

Again, the captains of industry probably thought this was the final nail in the Dutertes' coffin. Some even probably clapped their hands in the privacy of their safe confines, considering that fPRRD did not worship the ground they walked on like most politicians.

The Filipino-Chinese among them did not utter a word, and a few even dared issue public statements supporting the Marcos administration’s undisguised moves to raise the temperature in the South China Sea. While other claimants observe prudence, just like what fPRRD did during his watch, Pres. Marcos is demonizing China, notwithstanding his pronouncements to the contrary at the start of his term.

Of course, PBBM is no poster boy for sincerity and more so of gratefulness. His promise to bring down the price of rice to P20 per kilo and his nonchalance about the fate of flood control and infrastructure projects serve only to firm up the perception that there is another universe in his mind.

It was never about fPRRD and his war on drugs as PBBM’s defenders want to frame it. It is not so much about VP Sara as the present administration’s fixation to hold on to power at all cost.

One man’s meat is another man’s poison. The Marcoses’ choicest of meat is poison to the rest of the country. Read that again: the rest of the country. The elite probably shudder at the thought of being lumped with the masses who terribly miss fPRRD, his Sub Saharan stronghold in Mindanao or the OFWs who are showing the world they won’t stop until he is brought home.

Sad that it had to take the life of Que to burst the bubble for those who need governments and administrations less. The cynical and skeptical journalist H.L. Mencken once described the role of the media in his typical sarcasm: “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

Now that the comfortable knows how it feels to be afflicted, it bears watching what happens next.

As the neighborhood smart guy would say, better late than later.