President Marcos has revealed that he personally wrote the first and final parts of his fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA), which turned out to be among the most applauded portions of his latest public address.

Marcos bared this in his latest vlog on Saturday, Aug. 8, saying he remained directly involved in refining the speech until the moment he delivered it.

The President said preparations for the SONA began several weeks before the July 27 address, with a team researching statistics, events, policies, and programs that needed to be included.

"Ang katotohanan, ang buong-buo yung unang bahagi at saka yung huling bahagi; ako mismo ang sumulat no'n. Mahabang proseso ang pagsulat ng SONA speech (The truth is, I wrote the entire first part and the entire last part myself. Writing a SONA speech is a long process)," Marcos said.

He explained that the speech went through a long process of drafting, research, editing, and restructuring.

Marcos said the team carefully arranged the flow of the speech before he personally refined its language, changing some words and translating portions between English and Filipino to make the address more effective when spoken.

“We fine-tuned it so that, alam niyo po iba ang pagsulat para sa mga babasahin. Iba yung pagsulat para sa pagsasalita (you know writing for something that will be read is different from writing for something that will be spoken),” he said, emphasizing that a speech must be written for rhetoric rather than simply for reading.

The President said changes to the speech continued until the last minute, including during the delivery of the SONA, whenever a better way to express a point came to mind.

Marcos also admitted that he skipped several issues in his SONA. He, however, said that just because he left out some points does not mean those are not important.

"Marami kaming nailagay na kailangan na namin hindi namin na maisama dahil masyado ng mahaba kaya't abangan na lang ninyo sa susunod na SONA (We included a lot of things that we needed to discuss, but we couldn’t include them all because the speech was already too long. So, just look forward to them in the next SONA)," he said.

"Ito nga yung sinasabi ko na hindi lahat ng bagay ay matatalakay, pero hindi nangangahulugan na hindi ito importante. Napaka-importante nito (This is what I’m saying: not everything can be discussed, but that doesn’t mean these things aren’t important. They are very important)," Marcos stressed.

He said this as he shared a letter from the convener of the Youth for Health Coalition, who raised the state of health among youth in the country.

He assured them that his administration would do what it could to address the problems brought to his attention.