“The sad part for us citizens who are just minding our own business…is to be fodder in the political war”
The first article of impeachment against VP Inday Sara has to do with her eerie midnight rant where she made a “conditional” threat against the lives of the President, his first lady, and the Speaker.
Conditional because it was predicated on her being killed first, claiming to have secured the services of someone to do her bidding from her grave. “No joke, no joke” becomes the kicker that suggested seriousness.
In the same manner that “forthwith” has spawned a legion of lawyerly interpretations, threats, whether conditional, conditioned or jocular have become grist for the political mill.
Whoever advised the President to begin the campaign for his chosen candidates in a negative attack mode should be fired. They underestimated his predecessor’s built-in comparative advantage — witty attack laced with sarcasm, demonstrated several times in the presidential debates of 2016, which he clearly won and which pushed him from single digit to overwhelming margin of victory.
Even the Alyansa candidates behind him in the grandiosely designed Laoag stage sported worried mien, morose even. And in Iloilo where they went after, they could only mumble strained justifications for what the President said, which “violated” what campaign manager Toby Tiangco earlier said as “no negative campaigning.”
Now, several memes have been hogging the social media network about “pinabili ng suka” versus “nakakasuka.” Self-inflicted damage by the Alyansa communications team, whoever they are.
On the subject of threats, I myself was “threatened” by candidate Duterte in 2016, in one of the debate rehearsals held at the Marco Polo Hotel ballroom in Davao City.
When I told him not to “praise the police effusively because in Metro Manila, the police are not regarded positively,” he threatened me, saying “he could have me killed for that accusation.”
But after what came as a shock to me, he told me in an apologetic tone when he returned to his seat, “tinonto ra to” (joke only), and gave me a wide grin which erased my initial resentment.
So, as expected, when the former president mounted the stage at the symbolic Club Filipino, after calmly bringing up the issue of rice prices, and upping the ante about his drug addiction charge against his successor, he issued what some congressmen and their “analysts” seriously considered another “threat.”
Ginogoyo lang kayo nung matanda.
In his semi-retirement at his modest home in Davao City, he must have viewed or reviewed the gripping Netflix series of the “Designated Survivor,” which daughter Inday Sara jocularly used to excuse herself from the 2024 SONA. So he joked about “killing” the 15 senators to make way for his “unknown” senatoriables.
In typical Digong fashion, he quipped that “kawawa naman,” since not all of them are annoying. And then, in Designated Survivor analogy, he added, “the only way to do it is to use a bomb.”
Will the NBI, goaded by the eager-beaver congressmen, also charge the former president for grave threats? DOJ’s Boying Remulla will just throw their complaint in the wastebasket. Boying knows what will stand in court, as well as his politics.
But seriously, this is what the impeachment complaint filed at the last minute after the HoR inquisition, supposedly in aid of legislation, has done to the mid-term elections and the campaign preceding the voters’ decision.
It will be a numbers game, based on who will convict, who will definitely not, and who are likely to wait, listen and decide, as against those who will do Malacanang’s bidding no matter what.
Issues that matter most to the people will be shoved under the rug. It will be, as Prof. Danton Remoto in his Manila Times column last Saturday called “a fight to the death.”
Will voters listen to Imeesolusyon on food prices and farmers’ woes? Will they discuss Ping’s resolve about the bank secrecy law in their regular “tambayan’s” or Francis Tolentino’s emphasis on defending the WPS?
This will be a propaganda war, and impeachment will be the main focus of each side’s communication strategy. Not that they will verbalize it in their message box, but they will surely tar each other as black or blacker.
The numbers game is lopsided in favor of the Alyansa, for now. If the PDP, with only nine candidates, some of whom will take a miracle from above to win, they have room for three to choose to support.
The sad part for us citizens who are just minding our own business, hoping to escape the present woeful economic realities, is to be fodder in the political war, even if the President once asked, “is impeachment going to improve a single Filipino life?”