Blackout na naman, Punyeta.
the country that keeps turning off its own light.
There is something almost poetic about a country that spends so much of its life in darkness. Not the darkness of night, which is natural and therefore, might I say, forgivable. It is not the darkness that comes when the sun has finally surrendered to the horizon and people close their curtains, turn on their lamps, and accept that another day has ended.
I mean the other darkness, the sudden one. The darkness that arrives at 2:17 in the afternoon, the one that interrupts a student in the middle of an examination, that kills the electric fan in the middle of a humid philippine afternoon when the walls themselves seem to sweat and the air feels like it has become another punishment. The darkness that takes the Wi-Fi, the refrigerator, the computer, the television, the water pump, the charging phone, the livelihood of a small store, the work of an employee, the sleep of a child. And then, as if darkness were not enough, someone tells you, “sunday schedule ng baranggay niyo, ah.” As though darkness can become less, simply because someone scheduled its interruption.
We have become strangely accustomed to this, a little rain comes, and the people begin looking at the ceiling. A stronger gust of wind passes, and someone says, “brownout na naman.” The clouds become dark, and the people become anxious. Summer arrives, and the electric fan becomes less of a household appliance and more of a prayer. The heat rises, so as the demand. The power disappears, then comes the explanation. The maintenance, repairs, transmission problems, generation deficiency, overloaded facilities, vegetation, equipment failure, emergency work, scheduled interruption, unscheduled interruption, rotational brownout, manual load dropping, and technical difficulties. And perhaps, these explanations are all true, that is precisely what makes the situation so difficult to question. Because there really is a broken wire, there really is a damaged transformer, rain really does bring down electrical infrastructure, a power plant really does fail, the grid really does become unstable.
In May 2026, for instance, transmission failures contributed to a massive power crisis that caused widespread interruptions across Luzon and the Visayas. Sometimes the darkness is unavoidable, but when a nation becomes so familiar with darkness that it begins to expect it, we have to ask a more uncomfortable question.
When does an inconvenience become a system? And when does a system become a failure?
We live in a country where electricity is not merely electricity, it is education, employment, medicine, communication, food preservation, it is water, safety, business, a fan beside sleeping sick person, a laptop of a student trying to submit something before 11:59pm, it is the refrigerator containing a week’s worth of food bought with money that took someone several days to earn.
Electricity is not some luxurious little privilege belonging to the modern world. For millions of people, it is the invisible machinery that allows ordinary life to continue. And yet, in our country, the Philippines, we have somehow learned to live with its disappearance. Look across the country, the names may change. Meralco in Metro Manila and surrounding areas, ZAMCELCO in Zamboanga City, Electric cooperatives and distribution utilities in provinces across Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. The institutions may have different names, different territories, different systems, different problems. But the Filipino experience can sound strangely similar: “Brownout na naman.” In September 2026, the power situation in parts of the Visayas was serious enough for rotational interruptions to be implemented when electricity supply fell below demand during peak periods. And these interruptions are not simply one company deciding to switch off a neighborhood. There is an entire chain behind the light bulb in your bedroom, power plants generate electricity, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines transmits it through the high-voltage grid. Distribution utilities deliver it to homes and businesses, when supply becomes dangerously low, the system can require distribution utilities to reduce their load through manual load dropping, resulting in rotating interruptions. It is complicated, perhaps too complicated for the person sitting in a dark room at midnight. Because the consumer does not experience megawatts. The consumer experiences darkness, the consumer does not see transmission constraints, but a child sweating in bed. The consumer does not see contingency reserves, yet sees a business losing money. The consumer does not see a damaged transmission line, but an elderly person sitting beside an open window because there is no electric fan. And perhaps this is the cruelest thing about infrastructure failure, the system fails in numbers, but people suffer in flesh.
There is another kind of darkness, however, that concerns me so much more. It is the darkness that enters the mind after years of disappointment. The darkness that whispers, “Anong magagawa?” that is when citizens become dangerous to themselves, not because they rebel, but because they stop expecting anything, we stop demanding, stop questioning, stop believing that public services should actually serve the public. They begin saying, “Ganyan talaga dito.” That sentence may be one of the most destructive sentences a society can learn. This is how things are here. This is how things have always been. This is the Philippines, where rain causes brownouts, summertime, repairs, high demand, low supply, the equipment, the trees, heck, even animals cause brownouts. And eventually, perchance, nothing causes the brownout anymore. It simply happens, like poverty, traffic, bureaucracy, corruption, waiting, being told to be patient.
We should be careful with the word corruption. It is an enormous accusation, and it should not be thrown at every electrical worker who spends an afternoon repairing a line under the sun. The electrician climbing the pole is not necessarily responsible for the broken system. The technician replacing the transformer is not necessarily responsible for years of infrastructure decisions. The person answering the customer’s complaint may have no power whatsoever over the conditions that created it. There are ordinary workers who are doing difficult and dangerous jobs so that electricity can return. The darkness should not make us blind to them, but corruption does not only mean stealing money from a government office. It can also become a metaphor for something more frightening, the corruption of responsibility. When every failure has an explanation but nobody seems responsible for preventing the next one, when every problem is treated as an isolated incident instead of a symptom, when people are repeatedly inconvenienced and eventually taught to consider inconvenience normal, and citizens pay for a service but are expected to accept uncertainty as part of the package. Then something has gone wrong beyond the wires, something has gone wrong with the relationship between the institution and the people it is supposed to serve.
And this is where the word “stealing” begins to feel appropriate, even if not always literally. Not necessarily stealing electricity, not necessarily stealing money. But stealing time, stealing comfort, productivity, stealing sleep, stealing the ability of a student to study, stealing the ability of a worker to work, stealing the ability of a small business owner to keep their products cold, stealing hours from people whose lives are already measured in hours because their wages are. A blackout does not simply take electricity, it takes whatever depended upon electricity. And the poor often pay for the consequences more severely. A wealthy household can purchase backup batteries, a corporation can operate a generator, a hospital can have emergency systems, a large business can absorb the loss. But the small sari-sari store? the student? the minimum-wage worker? the family that cannot afford a generator? what happens to them? they wait, they sweat, they lose food, lose work, lose hours. And most tragically, they become accustomed to losing.
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In Zamboanga City, Zamcelco’s own public information includes an anti-pilferage campaign, reminding us that electricity theft is itself a real issue within the power sector. But electricity problems are not simply about generating more power. They are also about the infrastructure that carries it, the lines, the poles, the transformers, the substations, the transmission corridors, the maintenance, the investments, the regulation, the enforcement, the theft of electricity itself, the people who pay, the people who do not, the people who consume, the people who supply, the people who regulate, the people who decide, and the people who are affected but never invited into the room where decisions are made.
The problem is not one wire, it is an entire web. And when one part fails, someone at the bottom sits in the dark.
There is something almost melancholic about sitting in a Philippine house during a blackout. You are suddenly left alone with your thoughts, the fan has stopped, so as the television. The refrigerator has stopped humming and the Wi-Fi is gone. The room becomes quiet enough for you to hear your own breathing. And in that silence, the mind begins asking questions it normally avoids. How much of my life is actually under my control? how much of what I have depends on systems I cannot see? how much do I pay for things that I cannot guarantee I will receive? why am I angry? who am I angry at? the company? the government? the weather? the power plant? the transmission operator? the electric cooperative? the person who failed to maintain the infrastructure? the people who designed it? the people who approved it? the people who were supposed to regulate it? or everyone? And when you realize the terrifying thing, you cannot easily point to one person. The machine has become so large that responsibility has dissolved inside it, everyone has a reason. Everyone has an explanation, everyone is doing their part. And still, the room is dark.
You, reading this, would by chance have understood that particular kind of helplessness, the strange shame of being angry about something that everyone else has already accepted, the absurdity of wanting something as ordinary as light. Imagine wanting nothing extravagant, not wealth, nor power. Not political influence, not luxury. Simply just electricity, enough of it to sleep without sweating, to charge a phone to finish homework. Just enough to keep the food from spoiling, just enough to live an ordinary life. And even that begins to feel like asking for too much. Perchance, that is the tragedy. Not that the Philippines experiences blackouts, every country experiences failures. The tragedy is that ordinary Filipinos can sometimes be made to feel unreasonable for expecting reliability. As though wanting electricity to remain on is an unreasonable demand. As though asking for accountability is impatience, as though asking where our money goes is disrespect, as though questioning a system means we do not understand how difficult it is to operate. But citizens are not required to understand every transformer, every substation, every transmission corridor, or every generation contract. They are allowed to ask a simpler question: “Why does this keep happening?” And they are allowed to expect an honest answer.
There are scheduled blackouts, emergency blackouts, maintenance blackouts, outages caused by weather, caused by insufficient generation. There are interruptions caused by transmission failures, Meralco itself distinguishes planned interruptions, which can involve maintenance, upgrades, construction, or relocation, from unplanned interruptions caused by emergencies, generation deficiencies, adverse weather, foreign objects, and equipment failures. These distinctions matter because not every blackout is corruption, not every outage is negligence. Not every repair is an excuse. Sometimes, something simply breaks. But the existence of legitimate explanations should never become a shield against legitimate questions. A country cannot maintain its infrastructure merely by explaining why it failed after it fails. At some point, maintenance has to become prevention, investment has to become reliability, planning has to become preparation. At some point, the citizen must be able to believe that tomorrow’s electricity will not depend on whether the sky is cloudy. And then there is the bitter irony of summer. Every year, the heat comes. Everyone knows it is coming. The sun does not surprise us, April does not suddenly appear out of nowhere, May does not knock on the country’s door unexpectedly, we are well-aware that the heat will arrive, we know people will turn on their fans, we know air-conditioning demand will increase, we know electricity consumption will rise. And still, when the demand arrives, the explanation can become: too much demand. But isn’t preparation precisely the purpose of planning? If we know the heat is coming, why should the heat be treated like an unforeseen enemy? If we know demand will rise, why should demand itself become a surprise? The citizen is told to conserve. And perhaps citizens should conserve, but conservation cannot become an excuse for inadequate systems. A family can turn off unnecessary lights, a student can unplug a charger, a store can reduce consumption. But the responsibility for a national electricity system cannot simply be transferred downward until the household is blamed for wanting to keep its electric fan running. There is a limit to what an individual can conserve, we cannot conserve electricity that never arrived.
The most heartwarming part is that we have learned to joke about it. “Brownout ulit.” “Free sauna.” “Charge your phones habang may kuryente.” “May schedule na naman, check mo fb.” We turn inconvenience into comedy because sometimes comedy is the only weapon available to people who have no control. We laugh because even asking would be exhausting, we joke because anger does not restore electricity, we make memes because the transformer does not care about our frustration. But beneath the jokes is something serious. A citizen should not have to become funny in order to survive a broken system. A country should not be judged only by the grandness of its buildings, not by the number of skyscrapers, not by the size of its shopping malls, not by how many highways it has constructed, not by how modern its cities look at night. Perhaps a country should also be judged by whether the ordinary person can trust the ordinary things. Can the water run? Can the electricity stay on? Can the roads be used safely? Can public transportation be relied upon? Can hospitals function? Can schools operate? Can a person work without constantly preparing for the possibility that the system will suddenly disappear? Progress is not simply the construction of something new. Sometimes, progress is making sure the old thing finally works.
There really is an old cruelty in asking poor people to be patient. Be patient while the road is repaired, be patient while the electricity comes back. Be patient while the water returns, be patient while the service improves. Be patient while the investigation continues, be patient while the project is completed. Be patient. Be patient. Be patient. But patience is not infinite. A person can be patient for an hour, a family for a day. A community can be for years, but eventually patience becomes resignation. And resignation becomes silence, silence becomes permission. That is the darkness we should fear most. Not the darkness caused by a broken power line. The darkness caused by people no longer believing they deserve better. May the question be not, “Bakit palagi na lang blackout??” the deeper question is, “Bakit natin hinayaang balutin tayo ng ganitong kadiliman?” Why do we laugh instead of demand? Why do we sigh instead of question? Why do we immediately search for candles instead of asking why the lights keep going out? Why do we treat explanations as substitutes for solutions? Why do we assume that because something has always happened, it must always happen? Why do we allow the phrase “ganyan talaga” to become the final answer to every failure? And most importantly, Who benefits when people stop asking? that question deserves to be asked carefully. Not with accusations invented from anger, not with conspiracy theories, not with blind hatred. But with documents, audits, transparency, public records, regulation, journalism, with citizens who refuse to confuse an explanation with accountability. Because corruption, when it exists, survives best in darkness. And not merely physical darkness. Institutional darkness. Financial darkness. Political darkness. The darkness of contracts nobody reads, of decisions nobody explains. The darkness of responsibilities nobody claims.
The Filipino deserves more than electricity; we, Filipinos, deserve certainty. The certainty that when a bill is paid, the service being purchased is treated seriously. The certainty that when infrastructure fails repeatedly, someone studies why. The certainty that maintenance is actually maintenance, that investment is actually investment. The certainty that public utilities and regulators understand that behind every meter is someone whose life depends upon the service. And when something goes wrong, the public deserves an explanation that is clear enough to understand and honest enough to question. Not excuses, Ai-slop slogans. Not silence, not another facebook advisory posted five minutes before the power disappears. Accountability. That is what we should demand. Because there is something humiliating about living in a country where people celebrate when the electricity returns. Not because electricity returning is extraordinary, but because its disappearance has become ordinary. The lights come back, a family cheers. The electric fan begins turning, the refrigerator hums, Wi-Fi reconnects, phones begin charging, the television suddenly speaks. And for a few seconds, everyone is happy, then life continues. Until tomorrow, until the next rain, until the next summer, until the next repair, until the next advisory, until the next unexplained silence. And then, darkness again.
The most disturbing thing is that the darkness does not frighten us anymore. We have seen it too many times, we know exactly where the candles are. We know how long the power usually takes to return, we know which neighbors still have electricity, we know which phone has enough battery, we know how to open the windows, how to sleep through the heat, how to study beside a flashlight. We know how to continue living when the country switches itself off. And perhaps that is both our greatest strength and our greatest tragedy. We have become very good at surviving things we should have been allowed to fix. The Philippines does not need to become a country that never experiences darkness. No country can promise that, it needs to become a country where darkness is an exception, not an expectation. Where rain is rain, not a warning that the electricity might disappear. Where summer is summer, not a yearly test of whether the grid can survive. Where “scheduled interruption” means genuine, necessary maintenance rather than another ritual citizens have learned to endure. Where electricity is not something people feel lucky to receive after paying for it. And where the citizen is not treated as a helpless observer standing at the bottom of an enormous machine. Because the electricity does not belong only to the companies that generate it. It does not belong only to the corporations that distribute it. It does not belong only to the people who operate the grid. It belongs, in the most important sense, to the society that depends upon it. And perhaps the lights should remind us of something larger: A government, an institution, a company, a system, and a country are all ultimately measured by what happens to the person standing at the bottom. The person waiting, the one paying and sweating. The person studying, the person working and wondering why something so simple has become so difficult.
Maybe, we have romanticized our ability to endure for far too long, we call ourselves resilient when the electricity returns after hours of darkness, when families gather around candles and laugh about the heat, when students continue studying beside flashlights, when workers find another way to finish what they started despite losing hours of power. We turn survival into a national virtue, as though suffering becomes noble simply because we have learned how to withstand it. But, what if..
What if resilience is not always a choice? What if we are not resilient because we are stronger than everyone else, but because we have been given so little opportunity to be anything else?
A person who has no alternative does not endure because they have chosen endurance. They endure because there is nowhere else to go. The Filipino should not have to be known for smiling through every inconvenience, laughing through every failure, and finding a way to survive every broken system. We should not romanticize a mother keeping her children cool with a hand fan during a blackout, a student trying to finish an assignment while her phone is dying, or a small business owner watching food spoil because the electricity has disappeared again. These are not beautiful examples of resilience. They are evidence of people adapting to circumstances they should not have been forced to endure repeatedly. There is something deeply cruel about praising people for surviving conditions that should have been prevented. Resilience should be the bridge that carries us through an unexpected storm, not the cage that teaches us to live comfortably inside failure. Perhaps Filipinos are not endlessly resilient because we are uniquely strong. Perhaps we have simply become very familiar with having no choice. And when survival becomes the only option, calling it resilience can sometimes become another way of avoiding the question of why people had to survive in the first place.
So when the lights go out again, may we not only ask, “When will the electricity return?” we must ask, “When will we stop accepting the darkness?” Because there are some kinds of darkness that even electricity cannot fix. And those are the ones we must be most afraid of.
iv
