The Power of the Image and the Fear of Its Implications

Numbers, in the hands of the powerful, are malleable. They can be inflated or diminished, manipulated to serve an agenda. Whether the media insists that 6,000 or 2,000 Filipinos gathered in The Hague is ultimately irrelevant. The essential fact remains: thousands stood in solidarity for an 80-year-old retired president facing international scrutiny.

Foreign observers will not obsess over headcounts; they will ask the far more uncomfortable question—Why? What compels Filipinos, from all walks of life, to leave their jobs, homes, and daily routines to rally in the streets of a foreign city? Why do they defy a government that, by all measures, holds the instruments of state power? The spectacle of such a gathering carries a symbolic weight that cannot be erased by statistical revisionism.

The Marcos Jr. administration and its allies fear this, as all regimes do when confronted by the raw, unfiltered image of dissent. They understand that in the theater of global politics, perception is reality. The sight of a mass mobilization in The Hague sends a message that no government-sanctioned press release can easily counter: that the legitimacy of their rule is contested not just at home, but in the eyes of the world.

This is why control of the narrative is paramount. Reducing the crowd size, framing the protest as insignificant, or discrediting its participants are tactics of those who understand that the struggle for power is, at its core, a battle over perception. But the problem for authoritarian figures is that the most powerful symbols are not dictated from above—they emerge from below, in the streets, in the voices of the people, in the sheer undeniable presence of bodies gathered in defiance.

Governments can manipulate statistics. They can dictate headlines. But they cannot erase the image of history unfolding in real time.

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