Let the “bloodbath” begin forthwith

The Filipinos love cokfights. Sabungeros are even being killed for cheating in the game. Pinoys love to see a bloodbath. Our people have imbibed from the Spaniards, after 377 years of colonization, an addiction to any good fights, like the bullfights in Madrid, Andalucia, Seville, Cordoba and Ronda, Spain. Also the basketball and the baseball games in the US and the boxing fights in Las Vegas and in California.

That is why the vice president has challenged the administration on the impeachment. Bring it on. Let the bloodbath begin. And do it forthwith. She has the guts, the gall, the gumption and the glitz to make that challenge because she knows that she has the winning cards. She is the only impeached official of any country who is accompanied in her multiple peregrinations by two famous senator/judges, no less than the sister of her number one political nemesis, Senator Imee, and the Senate topnotcher and chair of the constitutional committee, Robinhood Padilla.

The vice president has that high spirit because her numbers have improved. Her supported candidates won: Bong Go who topped the senatorial polls, Rodante Marcoleta, her defender in the Lower House has been promoted to the Upper Chamber, Bato de la Rosa and her beloved BFF, Imee Marcos. She even made a joke that Imee is her hostage to guarantee that her father, the former president, will be repatriated forthwith. That word being explicitly included in the Constitution should be followed to the letter.

But the Senate and the House have different understandings of the word "forthwith." The House delayed its processes by not acting immediately on the first three impeachment complaints and then, at the last minute, rushed the fourth impeachment charge without referring the same to the appropriate committee before it was voted upon in the plenary. And then the secretary general took his own sweet time before forwarding the same a few minutes before the Senate adjournment.

And so, the Senate retaliated by "dribbling the ball from February until the completion of the May 12 election process. Then after four months or so, proceeded to listen to an unprecedented motion to dismiss filed by one of the senator/judges who asked the upper chamber to forthwith dismiss the impeachment. That motion will be remembered by all law students who are going to take the Bar Exams come September, as a "sui generis," the only one of its kind in all history and in the whole civilized world, where a judge is the one acting as counsel for the defense.

Then the Senate president has virtually amended the dictionary and the encyclopedia, as well as the Wikipedia, by making it appear the "forthwith" could also mean as soon as the elections are over, or after the new senators shall have taken their oath and shall have assumed office. Later, he also said that upon the start of the next session when the Twentieth Congress shall open its session to hear the president's SONA. Well, that can only happen in the Philippines. This is a country which is also "sui generis."

And so, there shall be no bloodbath as of the moment, and not before the Senate president is reelected by the new Senate. The impeachment has become subject to horse trading, a modus vivendi and a 'quid pro quo." By all the looks of it, the Senate president has sealed a blood compact with those who do not want to have the impeachment heard by a full trial. That is why this side of the case has tried to file a motion to dismiss. The Senate president who has been a brilliant UP law student should have gently reminded the proponent of that incongruous motion that judges should not act as defense counsels.

But the Senate president's political survival hinged on the support of the Duterte senators. And so, he had to play ball and dance the mazurka with the Davao Group. In the meanwhile, the people have already judged Chiz Escudero. At any rate, and by whatever maneuvers and no matter what ticks shall come out of his magic hat, his poll rating has gone down considerably and he is being eaten alive by the mass media, both print and broadcast. He will be severely punished in the polls in 2028.

The Gen Z and millennials voting sectors, the students, the business community, the Church and the civil society have all cancelled the name Chiz from their political vocabulary. The hoi polloi want a good fight. And Escudero denied them that pleasure. He shall pay for his reckless imprudence.