House Senior Deputy Minority Leader Mamamayang Liberal (ML) Party-list Rep. Leila de Lima says President Marcos must once and for all "show some strength" in his scheduled State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday, July 27.

De Lima--one of the solon-prosecutors in the Senate impeachment trial of Marcos's political ally-turrned-enemy Vice President Sara Duterte--said the Chief Executive must not let Filipinos gain a wrong impression about him.

"He cannot go on letting people ask for his head and threaten his life without any criminal liability," De Lima said of Marcos, who was set to deliver his second to the last SONA.

"I think this time PBBM has to show some strength in his SONA that would make all those in belligerent opposition against his administration to think twice about their next attempt at adventurism and regime change," she said.

While De Lima didn't mention any particular personality or group, the public may connect the dots with what it has heard so far in Duterte’s impeachment trial.

The prosecution panel had just finished presenting its evidence on the infamous death threats the Vice President uttered on Nov. 23, 2024 against President Marcos, his wife Liza Araneta-Marcos, and cousin former House Speaker Martin Romualdez.

In the hearings so far, and with the help of witnesses from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), the prosecutors established a "serious, active, and continuing” threat against President Marcos.

"He should stop appearing weak and afraid of confrontation," De Lima said in her unsolicited but sound advice.

"He can do this without being a strongman dictator like his father. He does not have to be a dictator to be decisive and brave," the former senator underscored.

At the very least, De Lima says she expects Marcos to "demonstrate political consolidation among congressional allies in light of the current challenges to his administration, some of which have not been subtle at all about overthrowing him".

"His administration has been threatened with mass mobilizations by certain groups with questionable political objectives. These are dangerous and cannot simply be dismissed as an innocent exercise of freedom of assembly," she said.

Leaning into the matter of violence in the country, De Lima unabashedly referred to this as the legacy of the Dutertes--the previous First Family.

"I would also like PBBM to deal with the culture of violence engendered by Duterte that now wreaks havoc in our communities, from both targeted and random killings by riding in tandems, to violence in our schools," she said.

"This is a much more complex problem than the economy, and I always felt that we will be dealing with the ramifications of Duterte's program of violent governance and disregard for human rights even long after he is gone," said De Lima.

She noted that "A generation of children grew up hearing a President order the killing of people with impunity."

"They have imbibed this mentality. And we are now only just starting to see the consequences of this imbibed mentality with the shocking new kind of violence in our schools," De Lima said.