By Diego Morra
Filipino voters should stop watching TikTok and social media posts which push the myth that Rodrigo Duterte was illegally arrested, shipped to The Hague and made to suffer for crimes against humanity that he had bragged about. As grizzled fishermen say, “Ang isda laging nahuhuli sa bunganga.” It would be stupid for voters as well to suddenly boost the favorability ratings of the orphaned Duterte senatorial candidates after the Mar. 11 arrest of a man who mocked the International Criminal Court (ICC) by asking the tribunal to arrest him quickly, before the angel of death beats them.
Now, we have commissioned surveys showing, against statistical probability, that Bong Go, the valet par excellence of Duterte Sr., getting 61% of the vote of the 2,000 or so respondents. Weeks before, only 25% of respondents said Duterte’s arrest was wrong, and the rest argued that the former president and mastermind of the bloody war against drug users should be tried by the ICC. To be honest, Go has not written any law worth remembering. Duterte campaigned for this guy, who thought the Senate lectern was for a karaoke session and so he had a duet with his consultant when asked whatever bill he was championing.
Similarly, voters should find it too adelantada of Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio, also known as Duterte Jr., to claim that she is the choice of 30.2% of adult Filipinos to run for president in 2028, or three years hence. Actually, she wants Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to resign and hand over the presidency on a silver platter (even if she were really allergic to taking the oath). Acting like China in Panatag Shoal, Sara harasses Malacanang daily, and threatening Marcos Jr. with decapitation, throwing his father’s remains into the deepest section of the West Philippine Sea (non-existent according to her Beijing backers) and asking a hitman to kill Marcos Jr, Liza Cacho Araneta Marcos and Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez in the event she is wasted. She wasn’t threatening, claims the lawyer in her, since it was “conditional” and will come to pass only when she is “assassinated.” Where can you find a stupid hitman abiding by that deal? Since honesty is not needed in politics, she can churn out scenarios fleshed out by her social media trolls and crones every second on X, Facebook and other outlets.
So, it is very clear that Go and Duterte Jr. are competing for attention using the apocryphal narrative that majority of Filipinos adore Duterte Sr. To do this, they commission surveys, create stories about people marching to denounce the “kidnapping” and play the victim card ad nauseam, and disseminate factitious (meaning manufactured) videos about somebody snorting coke, a woman being arrested in the US and Marcos Jr. being rushed to a hospital for treatment of a kidney ailment or bleeding gums.The only thing they did not do was to show that Duterte Jr. has been sworn in as President of the benighted Republic. Sara will continue to test the credulity of Filipino voters and bombard him or her with tons of yarn, the kind that is spun in Davao City’s Ecoland Village. This cognitive torture will never end because Duterte Jr. and Go believe they are entitled to control the hearts and minds of Filipinos. Implicit in that kind of mindset is their continuing insult of the intelligence of voters.
During the Holy Week, it is apropos for Filipino voters to think profoundly, wean the chaff from the grain and throw away bad seeds being sown by Duterte Jr. and Go, who are also engaged in a silent war against each other to win the loyalty of the decreasing number of Duterte partisans. Filipinos do not live by myth alone as they need food in the pantry, cash for cell phone load, cigarettes and alcohol to drown their sorrows (consumption of both has been significantly reduced in sari-sari stores) and jobs, steady jobs to replenish themselves and keep kith and kin together. These are the things that Duterte Sr., Duterte Jr. and Go cannot provide them.
They may all be grafters and graft is like an imbudo that cannot be filled, but there is no honor among grafters as they inevitably tear each other apart. In the case of Duterte Jr. and Go, both are inseparable from the patriarch, who is sure to face trial despite the insane demand of defense counsel Nicholas Kaufman, a dual British-Israeli lawyer, that the victims produce passports to prove that they existed. Kaufman surely knows how to earn his Euros but his ridiculous demand showed just how low is the quality of his legal pyrotechnics. Duterte Jr. and Go never benefited from the hearings conducted by pro-Duterte senators like Imee Marcos, now officially out of the Malacanang senatorial slate, and who may yet adopt the Duterte surname, if Honeylet Avancena allows it. Avancena, Duterte Sr.’s partner and nanay of Kitty, dismissed the hearing as “pa ek-ek” or just a show, the issue being mooted.
Neither is the endorsement of Camille Villar for senator helping Sara and her cohorts. The Villars are a political dynasty that has been designed to win tax amnesties for their companies, redraw the designs of expressways to pass through their properties to enhance their values and pamper their avarice for land. Camille is practically zilch at the House of Representatives and, by consorting with the Dutertes, she lost the support of bulk of Filipino voters. She, too, might adopt the Duterte surname. The prolonged investigation into Sara’s financial shenanigans will not help her win over the vast majority of the electorate. Millions have seen her ambitiousness, her incompetence and horrific ignorance of basic parliamentary rules. Worse, she wants to dictate what she wants on a government that she despises.
This week must be spent well and Filipino voters should analyze whom to vote for the Senate and local positions, as well as partylists. The Makabayan Coalition candidates offer them real alternatives just as Bayan Muna’s record (the partylist has never been wanting in reporting its accomplishments to the nation annually) can hardly be beaten by the parade of partylists funded, managed and directed by political dynasties. Elections are no joke. They results would provide every citizen a look into the kind of government he or she will contend with in the next three years. Do not allow the Dutertes and the Marcoses to proceed with their scams. #
