Triggered

A large cloud of uncertainty has descended upon our nation’s life.

Suddenly it seems we can no longer see beyond our noses as we try to pick our way towards a just future for our people. The last time I recall being in this sort of political unpredictability was during the impeachment trial of Joseph Estrada nearly a quarter of a century ago.

In every meeting I have been to the past few days, the question is asked: What happens now?

No one appears ready to answer that. We are in that sort of political turbulence where any outcome is possible. Even the unthinkable needs to be thought through.

Uncertainty is toxic to economic growth. Businessmen want predictability. Investments need some minimal amount of certainty. The vital ingredient of normality in our national life now seems absent. This political circus is going to cost the nation dearly, much more than that string of recent typhoons did.

Filipino politics has been through a long episode of magical realism where everything seems to defy the norms, everything is slightly but irreparably disfigured so that every look demands a second take.

The man on the street may take all that has happened the past few days in stride. We have a noisy democracy where verbiage often outpaces the facts on the ground. Regular citizens take all the showmanship with a large grain of salt.

But the rest of the world, reading the headlines, is throughly puzzled. The Vice President just announced a band of killers will go after the heads of the President, the First Lady and the Speaker of the House in the event something unfortunate happens to her. The former president appears to be wishing for the military to intervene in a broken leadership situation.

In no other country does the political situation seem to fluid, so volatile, so capable of implosion. Even when Latin America featured so many tin can dictators or when some African countries installed so many eccentric tyrants, no political moment approximates what we have now, where political gangs with nothing more than self-interest are assembling for a shootout at high noon.

Things were going downhill to begin with. Former president Rodrigo Duterte repeatedly accused the sitting president of illegal drug use. His daughter, the Vice President, shared fantasies about lopping off President Marcos’ head. Whatever else was said these past few days was icing on the cake.

The former president and his daughter share the same DNA code on at least this one thing: they always seem ready to say outrageous things. They do it for shock effect. But what they say not only grab headlines. They commandeer the course of events.

The last weekend, Sara Duterte went on a blistering rant. Her chief of staff and close friend was detained by congressmen for contempt. The Vice President decided to keep her company at the House of Representatives’ detention facility, aware that she was prone to anxiety attacks. Then, in the middle of night, she was ordered moved to the Women’s Correctional facility. The anxiety attack did happen and she was rushed to hospital.

It was at this point that she broke into that extreme midnight rant. The triggered rant may be explainable but never excusable. She forgets that a public official of her rank always speaks through a political megaphone and must constantly be prudent in speech.

Sara Duterte, the past few weeks, has been under extreme political pressure. She has been trying to outrun a House committee hearing into her use of confidential funds. No public official who was every trusted with confidential and intelligence funds will survive an inquiry that treats such funds as ordinary expenditure items.

Yet this is exactly how the House committee has proceeded with its inquiry – aggravated by a cavalier congressional propensity for citing civil service professionals in contempt. But the agenda clearly is much larger than properly accounting for the use of a few million in confidential funds. Allies of President Marcos are obviously gunning to knock Sara out of contention for the presidency in 2028 or a possible constitutional succession earlier. They can never sleep soundly with the thought she is a heartbeat away from the presidency.

The rules governing the disbursement of confidential and intelligence funds are obviously flawed. Reforming these rules would be a legitimate legislative concern.  But as far as the congressmen are concerned, this is not the important thing. They need to impeach Sara.

It is the political agenda, not the legislative one, that is bound to drive the political crisis deeper. This is what makes everything so damn unpredictable.

In 1986, the nation was fortunate in that we had a public personality like Jaime Cardinal Sin who could stand above the fray and find a relatively peaceful way through an irreconcilable factional war. We do not have such a transcendent personality this time around. There is no one who could broker a political truce.

A person widely respected in the business community, reflecting on the political implosion now in progress, put things most succinctly, saying Filipinos are so unlucky with the people we entrust with power.

Errata

For a banker, this typographical error is unforgivable.

In last Tuesday’s column, the amount of state-of-the-art equipment purchases recently made by the government security printing unit APO, was estimated at less than half the P270 billion detractors claim. The figure should be million.

Apologies.