“SONA thunderbolt has become no more than a suspended fart
For this year’s last article, let me summarize the major, major political events that defined our “annus horribilis.”
In January, we began with the “most corrupt” budget in history, one where the “smallest” committee of two, Rep. Elizaldy Co and Sen. Grace Poe, crafted the final appropriations bill that was summarily passed into law for the president’s signature.
Later, Sen. Poe said she abdicated her role to then SP Chiz Escudero while Rep. Co claimed his Speaker’s fingerprints were in that GAA, along with the President mismo, naming some of the most powerful in the inner sanctum of Malacanang.
February started with a bang when the HoR impeached VP Inday Sara, with 215 signatories in the articles of impeachment led by the president’s son, mismo. All in a day’s work, with the HoR secretary general rushing to have it received by his Senate counterpart before five that afternoon.
Recall that the president kept saying he was against the impeachment of his vice-president. Just empty talk it was.
Whispers turned into quick and lawless action when, on March 12, former President Rodrigo Duterte was shanghaied into the arms of the International Criminal Court, an event that would galvanize public anger going into the mid-term elections.
That singular issue would dominate the campaign, where a star-studded Alyansa ng Bagong Pilipinas was humiliated in May by the solid anti-Marcos votes of the South.
The people’s message was clear, so the Senate decided to throw back the complaint to the HoR, an act which the Supreme Court would sustain.
Alyansa’s campaign manager would charge that the criminal manipulation of the 2025 budget was effected because the HoR leadership had to bribe congressmen with both soft and hard pork, mostly flood control projects where the commissions were bigger.
The heavens intervened in June and July, sending rains that inundated our cities and plains, and so to inoculate himself from blame, and hounded by his boast in 2024 of 5,500 flood control projects, the president in his SONA of July 28 came up with a thunderbolt: “Mahiya naman kayo.”
His immediate audience gave him lusty applause, likely because they knew that it was just all sound and no fury. Empty talk, similar to saying he was against his Sara’s impeachment.
But the president had to demonstrate his seriousness. His foreign propaganda strategists came up with “Isumbong sa Pangulo,” and he visited sites where the flood control scam was seen in all its greedy details.
Again, optics, and the hallelujah prattle of his Cabinet about “si pangulo ang nag-umpisa, siya ang tatapos,” because “utos ni pangulo,” “walang sasantuhin,” “go where the evidence leads.”
To give substance to governance by talk, the president created an ICI, named credible persons to man the powerless body, but in a month’s time, its chief investigator resigned on account of intrigues spawned by the palace mouthpiece, followed a month later by its most credible commissioner.
And just a few days ago, the lady auditor drafted from the private sector likewise resigned, leaving the ICI with just a chairman and no commissioners. Functus oficio.
To add to the useless talk, the HoR leadership sponsored a bill that would legalize somewhat limited political dynasties in a macaber interpretation of Constitutional edict.
The president appointed a politician to become the new Ombudsman, moving him from the DOJ, where then and till now, much talk precedes little action.
The president kept warning the malfeasant in the infrastructure scandals that they will spend Christmas in jail, which was echoed profusely by his DPWH secretary, while the DILG secretary showed new detention quarters for the soon to be prisoners.
Yet Christmas passed, and only Sarah Discaya and those detained in the Senate by the now silent Blue Ribbon Committee, along with low level DPWH officials were detained. Dilis, sapsap, bangus, no sharks nor crocodiles.
Meanwhile, days before Christmas, the former DPWH undersecretary who knew too much, whose files had been snatched from her by a young congressman, and who was strangely ignored by both the Blue Ribbon and the ICI who should have dived deeply into her key role in the infrastructure mess, died under mysterious circumstances, apparently by suicide in a Benguet ravine.
Whither goes the swift retribution for the grossly systemic corruption that now defines the present government in the eyes of its public and the world as well?
SONA thunderbolt has become no more than a suspended fart.
Next week will be a new year, but the Coco Martin-like telenovela continues, with still no biggies charged.
Governance by more talk with dire economic consequences that will incite more anger from the public will be the continuing hallmark of this government.
