In sin and error pining

It was at an early Christmas lunch when a friend asked if I thought that Vice President Sara Duterte would be impeached, with all the motions now on the table to that effect. I wasn’t expecting politics to be taken up over the merrymaking, but this is the Philippines where we breathe politics, so I obliged.

I said that while I certainly believed that the VP was fit to be impeached for all the obvious financial irregularities happening under her watch, I very much doubted that it was going to happen. And why not? Because it was going to come down to the votes in the House and in the Senate, and while President BBM and his allies doubtlessly had the muscle to push the motion through, I just didn’t see why they would. And again, why not? You don’t think they can come up with the evidence to find her culpable for the misuse of hundreds of millions of public money in confidential funds? They could, if they want to, I said – but again, why would they?

Think about it this way, I said. Impeachment is political, so the facts don’t really matter much, except for propaganda purposes – especially with elections coming up in a few months. Don’t get me wrong – there are people who take the process and its reasons seriously, as we all really should, because millions going to non-people like “Mary Grace Piattos,” “Chippy McDonald” and “Fernando Tempura” in the guise of “intelligence operations” insults our non-artificial intelligence.

VP Sara’s refusal to explain these strange endowments paints her further into a corner – which, it seems, is exactly where she wants to be. When she says, “I’ll be at peace when I’m impeached” and when her drumbeaters exclaim that the hearings are turning the Dutertes into “folk heroes,” then you know that she’s not going to get what she wants.

Why would PBBM let her go? What would be in it for him? He doesn’t need a functioning Vice President – he never had one; this VP can’t point to a single memorable deed beyond publishing an expensive book. Cutting off his “UniTeam” partner and depriving her of her last official job would simply give her free rein to wreak more mayhem with no accountability to the government or the people.

Keeping her on the official payroll – but fundamentally powerless – would be the smarter thing. It was never in Sara’s nature to do a VP Leni and turn political Siberia into a veritable factory of good deeds. She’ll stew in the OVP, sans her confidential kitty, until she can’t take it any longer and resigns, which could easily be spun into a form of surrender or an abandonment of her sworn duties.

The other reason, of course, is that while VP Sara is drawing fire, PBBM can enjoy some peace of mind, and make benign speeches at this and that forum with a heartfelt smile. He knows that he has benefited immensely from the odious alternative the Dutertes represent in the eyes of many Filipinos, even those who staunchly opposed his candidacy in 2022.

The Dutertes have done Marcos Jr. the priceless favor of making him and whatever he does look good by comparison – a difference he has substantively emphasized by rejecting his predecessor’s slavishly pro-China policy and (despite reports of continued EJKs under his regime) withdrawing Digong’s murderous tokhang campaign. He has had his missteps, like that bizarrely ill-conceived Maharlika Fund, but I have been hearing murmurs of approval from otherwise progressive friends – albeit grudging and cautious – for many of his positions, an unthinkable proposition just a year ago, when the wounds of 2022 were still fresh.

But with more than half his term yet ahead of him, there’s opportunity aplenty for unraveling and for even graver misdeeds. Even now, while we profess shock and dismay over the P500 million spent by the OVP in confidential and intelligence funds for 2023, the House has given BBM a free pass on the even more staggering P4.57 billion his office disbursed for the same purposes that year.

And that’s why I think it’s wiser to keep the focus on the Dutertes and to keep the VP where you can see and hear her, flailing around and squealing like a stuck pig. The impeachment drama will play itself out in the New Year with more twists and turns than a telenovela, and then, for some reason, the votes will fall short, and the VP will be censured and chastised before being sent back to the pen. For what it’s worth, I don’t think impeachment is the proper penalty here; criminal prosecution, conviction and punishment should be, but that’s a whole other game.

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Christmas will soon be upon us – my 70th, in my case, a milestone I never expected to reach given the many young deaths that marked my generation, but one I thankfully accept as the ultimate gift and blessing, no matter the turmoil in our world today. I personally have much to cheer about and be grateful for – so why can’t I be merrier?

We associate Christmas with joy and new life, with the Christ child’s coming, but there is nothing to be jolly about where wanton greed and senseless death are concerned.

Everything today points to a headlong dive into a global cataclysm, a World War III that may not have a clear and time-stamped beginning like the invasion of Poland or the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but a prolonged and widespread series of provocative and catastrophic events occurring all over the planet – Russian incursions into Eastern Europe, Chinese occupation of Southeast Asian waters, Israel’s pyrrhic extermination of its enemies, North Korea’s incessant saber-rattling and nuclear brinkmanship, America’s surrender of the asylum to the lunatics and the inexorable degradation of the environment – all of which will come to a head. It will be horrific, but a side of me wonders if we need this cataclysm to remind us of our most basic values and virtues as humans, beyond ideology, religion, power and wealth.

The other week I had a reader, a pro-Israel partisan, writing me to contend that there was no one else to blame for all the dead children in Gaza but their parents who refused to stand up to Hamas. It saddened more than infuriated me to see that this is where all our presumably educated reasoning has come to – a justification for the slaughter of innocents. I wanted to shake the man by the shoulders, across the internet, to awaken the terrified and hungry child in him.

Our world will become yet darker and more difficult before it comes to its senses, rediscovers the value of truth, beauty and courage, and pulls back from the brink of self-annihilation. Yes, I remain optimistic about the future of humanity, about a time when reason and justice will prevail, but I am quite sure I will not live to see this “new and glorious morn.”

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Email me at [email protected] and visit my blog at www.penmanila.ph.