Pruning

One day, when I began to cut newly sprouting branches and drying twigs on the trees that I planted, Ludy, the lady owner of the lot adjacent to my mountain barangay property, seemed amused looking at a lawyer clumsily doing horticultural work. She crossed our boundary line, got near me and said “importante g’yud attorney nga mag pruning ka.” She explained why so and showed how it should be correctly done. Honestly, Ludy first humbled me with her use of the very word “pruning” which I imagined to be more technical than common language. She is now with the Lord.

True to the off tangent nature of this column, I will use the word pruning which the internet defines as “the removal or reduction of certain plant parts that are not required, xx or that are of no use to the plant” and apply it to an entirely unrelated field - politics. It looks to me that the administration of President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr., is trying to “prune” and remove certain political officials who appear to be of no use to his government or are arrayed with his political adversaries.

1. The cloud of doubt wrapping around the fate of Senator Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa, is, as almost everybody knows, getting to be clear. There, reportedly, is a standing warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for his arrest. If indeed he will be arrested and sent to The Hague, he is the first branch in the hypothetical government tree to be pruned.

2. I hear persistent though unverified reports that against Senator Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Tesoro Go, there is also another warrant for his arrest issued by the ICC. He is accordingly named as alleged "co-perpetrator" in the crimes against humanity case linked to former President Rodrigo Duterte's "war on drugs." Aside from an article published by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism on CLTG Builders’ allegedly having received from DPWH more than P1.85 billion in public infrastructure projects in the Davao Region, former Senator Antonio Trillanes, in July 2024, filed plunder charges at the Department of Justice against Senator Go and former President Duterte. Then in August 2025, news came out that CLTG Builders signed joint venture bids with key contractor St. Gerrard Construction, owned by Sarah Discaya at the DPWH amounting to ?816.98 million in 2017, I surmise that this Davao senator can be the second branch in the hypothetical Philippine government tree targeted to be pruned.

3. The third branch of this hypothetical government tree that is likely to be pruned still comes from the legislative department. He is Senator Rodante Dizon Marcoleta. From a social media post I saw, Senator Marcoleta, delivering a privilege speech, when he mentioned about the filing of plunder and indirect bribery complaints against him and three others for the alleged P75 million campaign donations in the 2025 elections. The Ombudsman investigation (and the Sandigan Bayan case) maybe likened to my cutter angling to prune this branch in this hypothetical government tree.

4. The plunder and malversation charges which the Office of the Ombudsman plans to file formally against Senators Jose Pimentel “Jinggoy” Ejercito Estrada, and Joel Villanueva at the Sandiganbayan tied to their alleged multi-million-peso anomalies involving government flood control projects and the reported ongoing Ombudsman preliminary investigation into plunder, graft and indirect bribery complaints against Senator Francis "Chiz" Escudero, stemming from his alleged involvement in anomalous budget insertions and the multi-billion flood control infrastructure are, in my opinion, demonstrable fourth, fifth and sixth pruning acts.

5. The same can be true of the criminal complaints supposedly for violations of the Securities Regulation Code filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission against Senators Mark and Camille Villar and other Villar Land Holdings Corp. executives. Together with the investigation by the DOJ and the Office of the Ombudsman on the Villar family regarding potential conflict of interest and graft in the flood control and infra structure projects, the Villars are likely the 7th and the 8th objects of the pruning.

In the next few days, we shall find out what are these prunings for.