THE three-day Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC) rally from June 30 to July 2, 2026, was certainly not a crowd-control story nor an EDSA traffic story, and certainly not merely a religious group defending one of its own. It was a political thunderclap. It was a public warning that many Filipinos now see the Marcos Jr. administration’s so-called anti-corruption drive not as a clean broom, but as a selective blade.

The rally began at the EDSA People Power Monument/White Plains area and later moved to Liwasang Bonifacio after the Quezon City government revoked the permit extension. The three-day INC rally ended with support for Sen. Rodante Marcoleta, who is now facing plunder charges at the Sandiganbayan filed by the Office of the Ombudsman, concerning P75 million in campaign contributions allegedly not declared in his SOCE (statement of contributions and expenditures).

Selective justice is injustice

But the deeper message of the rally was sharper than simple political sympathy: Selective justice is injustice. That was the moral center of the protest. The ralliers were not saying public officials should be immune from accountability. They were asking why accountability in the Philippines so often walks with perfect eyesight toward critics and political opposition, yet suddenly becomes legally blind when the trail leads to allies, protected officials or bigger scandals involving public funds and massive government corruption.

At the heart of the Marcoleta controversy is a basic legal question: Can private donations be magically transformed into plunder simply because the total exceeds P50 million? The answer, under the law, is not that convenient.

Plunder under Republic Act 7080 is not a matter of arithmetic. Prosecutors cannot simply add P30 million, P25 million and P20 million, reach the P50-million threshold, and declare, “Aha, plunder!” like legal magic. The law requires more: There must be ill-gotten wealth obtained through corrupt acts such as the misuse of public funds, raids on the treasury, government contracts, official favors or the abuse of public office to enrich oneself at the expense of the Republic.

That is the missing bridge in this complaint. Where are the public funds? Where is the government project? Where is the contract? Where is the official act sold? Where is the vote promised? Where is the committee favor delivered? Without any clear connection between the donations and a corrupt exercise of public office, the case risks becoming a legal costume party: private donations dressed up as plunder, suspicion dressed up as prosecution and arithmetic dressed up as evidence.

The indirect bribery theory suffers from the same weakness. The law punishes gifts accepted “by reason of office,” but that phrase cannot be used like a magic spell. It must be supported by facts. Otherwise, every large donation to a public figure becomes automatically suspicious, and every friendship with a politician becomes a political grenade and legally explosive.

If the donations were indeed personal contributions from long-standing friends, documented by deeds of donation and covered by donor’s taxes, then the prosecution must explain how lawful private donations suddenly became ill-gotten wealth. It must show the corrupt transaction, the public injury and the official favor involved. Without that, the case looks less like accountability and more like prosecutorial overreach.

Even more troubling is the complaint’s legal gymnastics: It treats the three donations separately to justify three counts of indirect bribery, but then combines them to manufacture a single plunder charge. Aggregation is allowed in a real plunder case, yes, but only when there is a proven unlawful scheme to amass ill-gotten wealth. Without that scheme, this becomes legal origami: fold the facts one way, it becomes bribery; fold them another way, it becomes plunder.

Very creative. Very convenient. Very dangerous.

This is why the plunder case against Senator Marcoleta is not just legally controversial. It is politically combustible.

Loudest voice

Senator Marcoleta has been one of the loudest voices questioning alleged flood control anomalies, governance failures and misuse of public funds. He is not a quiet senator. He does not whisper in committee hearings. He does not tiptoe around sensitive issues. He asks questions that powerful people would rather bury under press releases and patriotic slogans. That makes the timing of the complaint impossible to ignore.

The public sees the sequence. A senator investigates corruption. A senator questions powerful interests. A senator is set to sit as a senator-judge in impeachment proceedings. Then suddenly, a non-bailable plunder case was filed against him. The optics are not merely bad; they are politically toxic insofar as Marcos Jr.’s government is concerned.

The Marcos Jr. administration and its defenders may insist that this is simply the rule of law at work. But rule of law is not measured by how loudly government officials say “accountability.” It is measured by consistency. It is measured by fairness. It is measured by whether the same legal energy is applied to allies and critics, to friends and foes, to the powerful and the inconvenient.

A justice system that moves like lightning against critics but crawls like a tired turtle against protected interests is not justice. It is political choreography.

Do not bend the law

This is why the INC rally mattered. Its message was not simply “defend Marcoleta.” Its deeper message was: Do not bend the law to silence dissent. Do not weaponize legal institutions to weaken legislative oversight. Do not use plunder, one of the gravest crimes in Philippine law, as a political sledgehammer when the alleged facts may not even fit the legal architecture of the offense.

The Marcos Jr. administration is now facing a credibility crisis of its own making. The more it claims to fight corruption while appearing to target those who expose corruption, the more it feeds the perception that justice has become selective, discretionary and political. And selective justice, let us be blunt, is not justice with minor defects. It is injustice in formal attire.

At the end of the day, courts will decide legal guilt or innocence. But the public is entitled to judge the pattern, the timing and the political smell of this plunder case against Marcoleta. And right now, the smell is stinky.

Conclusion

If the government truly wants accountability, it should prosecute real corruption with real evidence, not stretch criminal statutes like cheap rubber bands. If it wants public trust, it must stop appearing allergic to equal application of the law. And if it wants to prove that justice is blind, it must stop making justice look cross-eyed.

The Marcoleta plunder case may yet become a landmark legal battle. But politically, its message is already clear: When the law is bent to punish dissent, the courtroom becomes a stage, prosecution becomes performance and justice becomes the casualty.

No doubt, the sharpest message from the INC three-day rally was this: A government that claims to fight corruption must prove that justice is blind, not cross-eyed, not selective and certainly not politically choreographed.