[Newspoint] A brewing emergency

Still, while not yet fully inactivated and still president, he cannot escape taking a position on an issue like Sara Duterte, an issue not just political and legal, but moral — indeed, an issue that poses an existential danger to the nation’s well-being When Ferdinand Marcos Jr. goes to Congress on Monday, July 27, to report on the state of the nation, the air will be filled with foreboding of an emergency, one so grave and so imminent that what he has to say now and what he has to do from now on will define his presidency. Everything will turn on how the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, his archenemy, goes. If she survives it, her path to the presidency, which she openly covets, becomes paved with dark intentions. And the curse is not just on him but on the entire nation. The only consolation is he gets it first. The Senate, as an impeachment court, is now trying Duterte on four charges: one involves a death threat on Marcos, his wife, and his first-cousin the former Speaker Martin Romualdez; the others, embezzlement of taxpayer pesos in the hundreds of millions, unexplained wealth in the billions, and kickbacks to her office from anomalous contracts with suppliers. Evidence in the embezzlement case is set to be presented at the trial. As for the death threat, the presentation has gone quickly. The prosecutors said the case was “rather straightforward.” Sure enough, the defense, in all those hours of cross-examination, did not so much as suggest that its client had not made the threat, because that would be a lie. In fact, she did it publicly, at a press conference, and footage of the event has been making the rounds in cyberspace profusely. In it she says, “I have already talked to someone” who would kill the three “once I died,” presumptuously laying the culpability for her hypothetical death squarely on them. She even adds superfluously, “No joke, no joke.” The Dutertes are never known to be less than serious when it comes to those things. During an investigation into death-squad killings in Davao City, Leila de Lima, chair of the Commission on Human Rights at the time, found herself right inside the lion’s den where Sara’s father, then-Davao mayor Rodrigo Duterte, was the pride male. She was marked for death herself, according to a confessed Duterte hitman. The hit went unconsummated — De Lima took an unplanned detour, thus frustrating the pre-positioned hit squad — but Rodrigo Duterte, upon assuming the presidency, had his hitmen in the Department of Justice, in Congress, and the courts carry on. They put De Lima, a senator by this time, in detention on concocted drug charges. She spent nearly seven years in jail, let out only to appear at her trial and set free only after Duterte had left the presidency. Duterte himself is now detained in The Hague, the Netherlands, awaiting trial by the International Criminal Court on charges of “crimes against humanity” for thousands of extrajudicial killings in his war on drugs during his presidency. Marcos’ police chief had arrested him on a warrant issued by that court and delivered by the Interpol, and put him on a plane on the same day for the 6,000-plus-mile flight. Now, it’s his daughter’s turn at a reckoning, in her home country, where patronage is currency and her family has built a considerable herd following. If opinion polls were a determinant and the presidential election were held today, she would be a shoo-in. In fact, without regard for the law — although admittedly, it has proved toothless across the board — she prematurely declared for the next presidential election, in 2028, and has been campaigning vigorously since — and with some success, judging again by the polls. A relentless barrage of propagandistic falsehoods on social media tends to swamp revelations about her true gangster character. The only thing that will stop her in her tracks is a guilty verdict by the senator-judges. It removes her automatically as vice president and bans her from taking public office ever again. But that requires a two-thirds vote, although that threshold looks less formidable now that the Duterte bloc has lost control of the Senate after a few defections. A further thinning of its ranks is in prospect as the law begins to catch up with members charged with non-bailable crimes; once their cases go to trial, they could be held in detention for its duration and become ineligible for impeachment duty, thus unable to vote. But the trial, being nationally televised, thus exploitable as a political platform, pro-Duterte senator-judges work it for the purpose to the hilt, shamelessly acting as if they were themselves counsels for the defense. And, very suspiciously, the presiding senator-judge, who happens to be one of the defectors from the Duterte camp, indulges them. At any rate, If Sara Duterte is acquitted and goes on to be elected president, a review of Rodrigo Duterte’s regime should make for a fair warning of what’s coming: cronyism, plunder, vice crimes, weaponization of the law, the security agencies, and the courts; vengeful targeting, and promotion of communist China’s expansionist designs. As I’ve said, it’s all too obviously in the blood. Anyone dreaming of a somewhat chastened Duterte II presidency is bound to be rudely roused. Ferdinand II himself, for all his benignness, has yet to come to terms with the bald fact of his father’s own notoriety, but, like him or not, there’s just no taking away from the son’s fairly responsive presidency. But what has he got in response to the brewing emergency? Surely, he wants to do something, if only for her family’s sake. But what? So far, President Marcos has tried, it seems to me, to stay above the impeachment fray, while much of the nation is in or onto it anxiously, like me. I guess he is careful to be seen as uninvolved or impartial, to be consistent with his apparent wish to look good, although I also suspect he is implicitly replying to Duterte’s persistent portrayal of her case as something put up at his urging — “politically motivated.” But who cares! Who cares if helping stop a Sara Duterte serves whosever political interest? In his case, anyway, Marcos is being tested by the circumstances — by the fates, if you like. Never mind whether or not he’s looking to be redeemed from his own notorious legacy. To the Dutertes, Marcos is not just a lame duck, but a dead one. Still, while not yet fully inactivated and still president, he cannot escape taking a position on an issue like Sara Duterte, an issue not just political and legal, but moral — indeed, an issue that poses an existential danger to the nation’s well-being. That’s why Marcos is expected to work his political will by doing what he can by law and by conscience to stop Sara Duterte. That’s also why I can’t wait to know what he has to say in this, his penultimate and possibly last relevant, State of the Nation Address. – Rappler.com