“Having said goodbye, the vice-president will now be subjected to lingchi: political death by a thousand cuts”
I am no fan of Taylor Swift, but when I was searching for the Chinese noun that means death by a thousand cuts, I chanced upon a Taylor Swift song titled precisely that, and describes “saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts.”
Death by a thousand cuts, “lingchi” in celestial patois, was a form of torture used by Chinese emperors and their vassals in Vietnam and Korea which almost always led to death.
It seems abundantly clear that even before, but especially after Sara said “goodbye” to PBbM and broke away from the Uniteam, Congress is bent on killing her politically by way of a thousand cuts.
You could see the sadistic pleasure in the faces of the leftist members of the HoR as well as the former “sip-sips” to the previous president while they questioned how she spent her confidential fund endowment from the Office of the President in 2022, even as they were supposed to deliberate on the current appropriations bill for 2025 submitted to them.
They are deliberating on the National Expenditure Program, also called “the president’s budget,” precisely because it was crafted in Malacanang, and it should be understood that it passed the rigorous examination of the DBM as head of the DBCC before it was approved by the president, mismo.
Ah, but no! Congress, its honorable members insist, should scrutinize every line and comma in that president’s budget as a matter of transparency and accountability. How about your pork barrel guys?
And the yellows gleefully approve of this, cheering not just the party-list lefties but also the chairperson of the sub-committee, once a true-yellow advocate now part of the Bagong Pilipinas choir with a major solo role, who wants her committee members to just “stick to the plan”.
And what is the plan? Something crafted when a group of 10 or so hotshot lawyers briefed them prior to the hearings, on how to use a COA report that is not yet final and turn it into a fishing expedition on the 125 million confidential funds released Dec. 15, 2022 by the DBM?
Or on how to turn the tables on the supposed EJKs of the past which they did not question then?
One can fault the staff of Inday Sara for not knowing any better than to (1) make a written request and presume good faith; and (2) not making an immediate explanation as to how a much-delayed release of the requested funds had to be spent or obligated prior to the end of the year which, minus the holidays, is 11 days in all.
They made a fatal assumption that as their principal was key to the Uniteam’s resounding victory, they would face no scrutiny.
After all, there is a traditional practice, age-old as Rep. Rodante Marcoleta argued, that the submissions of the Office of the President and the Vice-President, as well as that of the Supreme Court, are given immediate approval as a matter of courtesy by the legislative to the other co-equal branches of government.
Well, they thought wrong. Having said goodbye, the vice-president will now be subjected to lingchi: political death by a thousand cuts.
The OVP budget was sliced by more than half, the 60 percent cut now transferred to DSWD and other agencies which would heed congressional “ayuda” allocations in aid of re-election, better called “pork” by another name.
But beyond the vice-president, they also have a “plan” for the former president and his allies, to trot out witness after witness to lay the predicate for what they hope the ICC would see as clues to warrant prosecution.
And for this they had to create a super-committee, borrowing the acronym from our now user-friendly security allies, called QUAD.
The gambit is clear. If these will not prosper in the courts of law nor be useful to the ICC they hope to welcome as intruders into our justice system, they will at the very least be “killing her softly” as in destroying the image of the incumbent vice-president.
The salivating “yellows” who were marginalized in the previous government cheer gleefully while proposing impeachment, but on what basis?
On the basis of tentative COA reports? On the basis of “misused” confidential funds when the a priori issue should be the irregular transfer of funds by the OP when there was no such item in the OVP’s 2022 budget?
Ah!, but they say that impeachment is not about legal judgment; it is a political exercise which is lodged in the HoR by the Constitution, the trial of which will be in the Senate.
Interesting times and interesting plans. Good luck to the plotters.
As for the vice-president, let me use a Bisaya advice: “Ayaw pag-kumpyansa, ‘day.”
Who was it who said that what does not kill you could actually strengthen you?
