The Marcos Jr. administration has discovered the secret to flawless governance—never make a mistake—just make sure someone else made it first.

Every crisis now comes with a ready-made explanation. The peso falls because Filipinos are supposedly too proud. Flooding and traffic? Stay home. Flood-control corruption? That started under Duterte. A school shooting? Duterte was a bad influence.

It’s an impressive system. Problems may change, but accountability remains wonderfully unemployed.The peso is falling? Apparently, kasalanan ng mga Pilipino—mayayabang kasi. Never mind that currencies are affected by interest rates, inflation, trade and investor confidence. Apparently, the peso simply got offended.

Flooding and monstrous traffic in NLEX and SLEX? The solution seems equally innovative: huwag na lang pumasok. If everyone stays home, traffic disappears. Problem solved.

As for flood-control corruption, the answer is familiar: “Nag-umpisa naman noong Duterte administration.” Fair enough—governments inherit problems. But after years in office, inheritance is no longer an excuse. If you inherit a leaking roof, you fix it; you don’t spend years explaining who originally put the hole there.

And then there is the tragedy of a school shooting. Instead of focusing squarely on the causes of violence and the government’s responsibility to protect students, we somehow arrive at another political culprit—Duterte, because he was supposedly a bad influence.

At this point, perhaps the government should simply issue a standard response to every crisis:“Not our fault.”

The problem is not that the Marcos administration inherited difficult problems. Every administration does. The problem is claiming credit when things go right while passing the blame whenever things go wrong. That’s what we call political hot-potato diplomacy.

Filipinos don’t need a government that is exceptionally good at explaining who caused the mess.They need one willing to say “This happened under our watch. We will fix it.” That would be a refreshing change.