He’ll take you to hell

” Among his four children, former president Rodrigo Roa Duterte (FPRRD) considers his daughter from his wife Elizabeth Zimmerman as the one who got most of his genes. FPRRD was, of course, referring to Vice President Sara Duterte, who also followed his footsteps as Davao City mayor. VP Sara’s youngest brother Sebastian, “Baste,” is currently the mayor of Davao City, while eldest brother is Davao City Rep. Paolo “Pulong” Duterte.

Separated from his first wife, FPRRD has another daughter Kitty with his domestic partner, Cielito “Honeylet” Avanceña.

At the height of their UniTeam campaign before the May 2022 elections, then mayor Sara told reporters that her mother called her attention against publicly quarreling with the opposition. “My mother told me: ‘Everyone knows you are the daughter of Rodrigo, but people should also know you are the daughter of Elizabeth…Shut it down’,” then mayor Sara quoted her mother’s words.

Her 79-year-old father FPRRD is making a comeback bid as mayor of Davao City in the coming May 2025 mid-term elections, with son Baste sliding down as his vice mayoral runningmate. The father-and-son tandem have filed their respective certificates of candidacy under their local political party, Hugpong sa Tawong Lungsod.

Like father, like daughter, both are lawyers by profession and graduates from the same alma mater, San Beda College of Law. As far as FPRRD is concerned, it is his eldest daughter who is much like him in temperament and feisty attitude in life. Both also use the same vocabulary and penchant for colorful language, especially when hitting at their foes.

In fact, FPRRD did not spare the Senate Blue Ribbon sub-committee public hearing from his usual profanity-laced testimony last Monday. At the outset, FPRRD impressed upon the senators not to give him special treatment because he came prepared to answer all the accusations hurled his way three years after his term of office at Malacañang Palace ended.

“My mandate as president of the Republic was to protect my country and the Filipino people. Do not question my policies because I offer no apologies and no excuses. I did what I had to do. Whether you believe it or not, I did it for my country,” FPRRD declared, reading from a prepared opening statement.

FPRRD endured the almost eight hours of grilling at the Senate public hearing on alleged extrajudicial killings (EJKs) during his administration’s all-out war against illegal drugs. The Philippine National Police (PNP) acknowledged only a little over 6,000 deaths of suspected drug personalities killed during the six years of the Duterte administration. FPRRD, along with his former PNP chief, now Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, were charged with “crime against humanity” before the International Criminal Court (ICC) filed on behalf of the victims of the drug-war EJKs.

Many of the EJK victims were killed purportedly because they allegedly fought back to resist police arrest, or “nanlaban,” during the “Tokhang” campaign launched by Dela Rosa and continued on by his PNP chief successors. Triple the official number reported by the PNP, The Hague-based ICC is currently investigating FPRRD et.al. for these summary killings.

FPRRD got into a heated exchange on what he described as differences of “semantics” of law with a non-lawyer, Senate assistant minority leader Risa Hontiveros. Paraphrasing from his statements before that “drug users and drug criminals deserved to die” and quoted a book titled “Some People Need Killing,” Sen. Hontiveros struck a raw nerve of FPRRD.

“Wala akong pakialam sa criminal kung saan silang impierno gusto nilang pumunta…Doon sila sa impierno at doon tayo magkita,” FPRRD fumed. Calmly responding to the rants of FPRRD, Sen. Hontiveros argued back, “The Senate has no jurisdiction in hell.” To which FPRRD quickly shot back: “Doon tayo pupunta.” To which Sen. Hontiveros countered she “has no ambition to go to hell.”

As always, the former president had the last word: “Hilahin kita, Ma’am (I will pull you to hell)!”

Obviously trying hard to contain his ire, FPRRD had to ask for a one-minute recess to go to the men’s room. Resuming his testimony, FPRRD conceded later on in his sworn testimony that his administration’s anti-drug war was “not perfect,” given the several cases of EJKs that took place. He blamed these EJK incidents largely on the so-called “ninja” cops whom he included as among the “the purveyors, the merchants and the pushers of this demonizing element.”

FPRRD’s references to “hell” brings to mind how VP Sara similarly alluded to the political allies of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM) as supposedly behind attempts to “drag her to hell.” During her two-hour press conference at the OVP last Oct. 18, VP Sara backed her comments on why she believes the present administration of PBBM has put the Philippines “on the road to hell.”

“It’s not my fault that we are in this road to hell. It’s not my fault that he does not have the competence to lead. If you know you have shortcomings, you’d speed up your work to catch up,” VP Sara scored PBBM in mixed Filipino and English. VP Sara cautioned PBBM to henceforth refrain from discussing her rift with him. “Tell him (PBBM) not to mention my name because if he does, it will bring up this ‘drag me to hell’ press conference all over again,” VP Sara warned. She vowed that starting that day, OVP’s tagline is now “drag me to hell.”

She was apparently still smarting from PBBM’s earlier media interview when he confessed to being “deceived” by their supposed friendship. This was before VP Sara resigned as concurrent education secretary last July and cut her ties with PBBM’s UniTeam.

It was in the same OVP press conference when she threatened to dig up the remains of PBBM’s namesake late father from the Libingan ng mga Bayani. It was during her father’s term at Malacañang when he allowed the burial of Marcos. In obvious defense of his daughter, FPRRD dismissed VP Sara’s threat as just “her story” using hyperbole.

May all souls rest in peace.