“Will the mercenary hawks in the HoR continue to push for the kill now, not later?”
If she had run for president in 2022 instead of accepting to be the team-mate of the current president, would she have won?
Inday Sara believes so, stating, in the midst of moves in the House to impeach her, and to paraphrase a beautiful song from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s hit musical, South Pacific, that “this nearly was mine”.
There is no use deciphering what could have been. The Uniteam was a political marriage, and like another in our political history, it was bound to disengage. Cory and Doy’s unity in the snap elections of 1986 was a political marriage as well, and foundered two years later on the shoals of betrayal.
Ambition, power and greed have successfully broken the Uniteam as well, yet much of the blame can also be attributed to the political naivete, sense of entitlement and “unforgiving” character trait of the lady who would be president.
(Disclaimer: A reader in his comments to my article last Thursday, Dec. 5, quipped that I would still want her to be president in 2028, despite her “demolishing herself”.
To this I respond: Only those fanatically loyal to a political brand or personality choose their candidates so early in the game. Fact is, I have never been close to the vice-president, and have met her on only two occasions since 2011).
The political ethos and praxis of cities and provinces far-removed from “imperial” Manila are quite different. Though US Speaker Tip O’Neill famously said “all politics is local”, the national terrain must be handled differently if one wants to be president of the benighted land. That terrain is full of landmines.
It does not help the vice-president that her personal relationship with her father are not quite ideal. Not that “father knows best” all the time. He may be a grandmaster when it comes to political chess, but kings, queens and princesses do not always make similar moves.
In 2021, the president who had the highest public approbation in recent history failed to define his succession, and was not even a witness to the political marriage of Inday Sara to Bongbong.
But then again, what is done is done, and now, it is undone; too late for regrets.
Because her almost wholly imported staff and handlers from Davao felt a sense of entitlement after initially happy marriage, they became negligent and careless, as shown in the inquisitorial revelations of the House.
Right off the bat, Sara put up nine satellite offices all over the country, the better to serve the people, she thought, but there was no appropriation in the 2022 budget she inherited from Leni Robredo.
Having satellite offices required funds for personnel services and MOOE, plus a little capital outlay. Her handlers thought of asking for funds from the Office of the President, as Congress cannot expeditiously legislate a supplemental budget to satisfy her instant needs. They foolishly wrote a letter in August 2022, asking for 250 million, but got only 125 million, released a few days before Christmas.
I don’t think she pocketed those funds as Makabayan and Akbayan would make the public believe. She must have used these to pay staff of the satellite offices plus operating expenses. And thinking that being “confidential and intelligence funds”, her staff foolishly and naively came up with Mary Grace Piattos and Yoyoy Villame, alias Kokoy Villamin, as recipients to justify before a COA which usually does not open sealed envelopes of CIF liquidation. She fell into a trap.
But when you are frontrunner for the presidency come 2028, you have to be very nimble-footed. Vice-President Binay’s “kalbaryo” in the hands of Trillanes, Cayetano et al. should have been a lesson.
Now she is besieged, and sympathy from Bongbong’s elder sister and friend Imee could only do so much with so many guns pointing at her. Even her political mentor GMA has been eerily quiet, distancing herself from the fray.
Naively too, perhaps with a quantum of trust in the happy days of marriage, Inday Sara joined Lakas instead of her father’s party, the PDP, which could have been anchor of political support as they look forward to 2028. But their would-be champion disdained them, so the politically abandoned sought shelter in Lakas or Federal and whatever else.
If you connect the dots of my Dec. 2 column about the “black pope” interceding for political peace at this time, with the “one step backward, two steps forward” tactic I wrote about on Dec. 5, the whole picture unravels.
Will the mercenary hawks in the HoR continue to push for the kill now, not later? Vamos a ver.