For a change, the past week saw less political attacks between the warring factions, no midnight rants and no threatening words. One might almost describe our politics as peaceful. Maybe even uneventful.
The respite is certainly welcome. It allows us to reflect on what is important and what is not.
Until the major combatants decided further factional warfare would only harm the nation, we did seem well into an episode of political turbulence. Earlier last week, President Marcos himself delivered what was probably his angriest speech to date, threatening to meet fire with fire.
But that was the last he spoke about the rapidly escalating tensions involving his own irrepressible Vice President. In a matter of a few days, he surprised his most loyal partisans by sending legislators a text message urging them not to proceed with moves to impeach Sara Duterte.
The more cynical observers immediately concluded this was a Pontius Pilate move: washing his hands of any responsibility while his allies bungled onwards to politically crucify the second highest elected official of the land. The President would later on publicly admit he sent out such a message.
The more seasoned observers saw the President’s signal to his congressional allies as a most astute move. It allowed the situation to decompress and everyone to recalibrate.
After Sara Duterte’s midnight rant the weekend before, it did seem the situation could only become explosive. Things could quickly move towards the brink. Beyond that there was only an imponderable abyss.
There was no civil personality with enough gravitas to mediate between the contending factions. A handful of bishops reportedly offered to mediate. But they did not have the political weight the late Jaime Cardinal Sin had in the eighties. No one bothered to take up their offer.
It was clear, when the situation was at its most intense, that the main factional players themselves will have to willfully step back from the brink. And they did.
With very little fanfare, the oppressive detention of Sara Duterte’s chief of staff, cited in contempt of the legislators, was shortened. The congressmen were not in full possession of their faculties when they allowed a motion by a leftist representative to extend the period of detention without justification to do so. This would have invited a habeas corpus petition before the Supreme Court that will not be pleasant for the congressmen.
No legislator has spoken publicly so far about President Marcos’ request to abandon moves to impeach the Vice President. But it does seem most of the legislators are ready to heed the President’s call – even as the ever-destructive leftist party-list representatives want to push ahead with this highly polarizing step.
The impeachment agenda is driven by narrow partisan motives. It would have required the sordid spectacle of Sara Duterte’s persecution by people who do not have clean hands.
Given what we now know of her personality, Sara would not go gently into the night whatever the political facts on the ground were. She would fight back tooth and nail, even if she did not have organized mass support. The fightback would produce so much mudslinging that none of the major players are likely to survive politically for very long.
Given what we know of our legislators, they would use the opportunity of factional turmoil to extract much concessions from the President. Remember how former president Noynoy Aquino had to basically bribe the senator-judges with hundreds of millions in “development” funds dispensed in an “accelerated” manner to convict Chief Justice Renato Corona. The whole episode produced the pork barrel scandal that swept through the political edifice.
Who knows what this Senate will demand from the sitting President in the event impeachment passes the House and coverts the upper chamber into a trial court. Who knows what secrets will be spilled in the course of impeachment proceedings. Who knows how other groups and institutions will react to this unwanted spectacle.
In a word, an impeachment move by the House will throw the whole nation into a political pressure cooker. People will be forced to take sides. Investors will scurry towards safer havens. Our otherwise positive economic prospects will sour. The Marcos II years will be remembered as years of turmoil rather than progress.
Already, the enforcement agencies have begun investigating possible crimes arising from the Vice President shooting her mouth off. If these investigations proceed any further, the whole nation will look laughable. Freedom of speech will be diminished. Sara Duterte wins the status of Aung San Suu Kyi. That will be undeserved.
In their more sober moments, some of the major power players seem to have come to the realization they have everything to lose and nothing to gain from allowing the tensions to build up until things are ready to explode. There are other ways to perform character assassination than by means of a legislative carnival.
Sara, for her part, appears to have realized that the more hysterical her rants, the more distraught everybody becomes. The nation’s pressing concerns should not be overshadowed by mismatched expectations about how the gravy train will be distributed.
If she goes on and on, it is unlikely she becomes the lightning rod for public discontent. It is more likely she becomes a tiresome sideshow rather than a rallying figure. At this point, after all that has happened, silence is golden.
Most Filipinos are exhausted just making a living.