Stand aside, this is a fight of two dynasties

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

President Bongbong Marcos, First Lady Liza Araneta and cousin Speaker Martin Romualdez heeded that Sun Tzu dictum last weekend. They kept silent as VP Sara Duterte livestreamed tirades against them.

Duterte committed error after error.

She announced having contacted an assassin to kill the three: “no joke, no joke.” Since she would benefit most from the President’s death, her threat betrayed power lust.

She condemned Marcos Jr.’s year-round electioneering via cash dole outs. That reminded voters of his and her questioned 2022 vote count.

She accused Araneta of sending her millions of government cash “even if not an official.” That raised questions of what she did with the money and why she didn’t report to authorities.

She sneered that she can’t address Romualdez as “Speaker” because she didn’t elect him. Impliedly, majority of Filipinos who didn’t vote for her shouldn’t respect her either.

Crying politicking, she twitted lawmakers for scrutinizing her “confidential” spending. That spotlighted her refusal to explain P612.5 million that her office paid to aliases in 2022-2023.

She dared them to look instead into deadly floods despite hundred-billion-peso river dredgings. She’s right, they should. Those anomalous floodworks started during her father Rody Duterte’s presidency.

She chided them for violating her chief-of-staff’s civil rights in detaining the latter for contempt. Human rights advocates reminded her of 36,000 slayings of mere suspects during her father’s bloody drug war.

Her threats and cussing went viral worldwide. Local and foreign audiences once deemed her a frontrunner in presidential election 2028. Do they still think that way after witnessing her crumble under pressure?

She backtracked when lawmen stepped in. She claimed that her assassination threat came with a qualifier, “They want to kill me, so if they do, then kill them too.”

Still, the NBI subpoenaed her to answer for sedition and grave threats. “We’re taking this seriously,” Justice Usec. Jesse Andres stated.

In May 2020, agents nabbed a Dagupan teacher, a Cebu youth and a Boracay carpenter for joking online about cash rewards to assassinate president Duterte. The agents didn’t touch the latter for offering cash to murder critique bishops.

The PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group is probing too. Its focus is on Duterte’s other possible offenses, like breach of security and disobedience to persons in authority, while holing up in Congress.

Secretary General Reginald Velasco and Sergeant-at-Arms Ret. Maj. Gen. Napoleon Taas complained of Duterte’s two unauthorized overnight stays in the high-security complex. Uniformed policemen and guards were pushed aside.

A viral video showed Duterte requesting CIDG Brig. Gen. Nicolas Torre to please let news cameramen into the hospital. Whereupon, she and entourage wheeled in her anxiety-stricken chief-of-staff.

Duterte, a lawyer, can also be disbarred. Anyone can bring up two charges, said former Integrated Bar president Domingo Cayosa. One, disrespect of law in publicly threatening assassination. Two, repeated expletives on live news broadcasts. Countless lawyers have been punished for those.

Zambales Rep. Jay Khonghun summed everything up succinctly: “Is this the Duterte brand?”

Only two weeks ago Rody Duterte made a scene at the House inquiry into extrajudicial killings of the six-year drug war. Duterte repeatedly disrupted the hearing, harangued victims’ lawyers and cussed legislators.

Murmurs of people-power revolt spread. The AFP and the National Security Agency swiftly declared that all’s well with the military.

Such assurance was unnecessary. Duterte is not like Ninoy Aquino, whom dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. assassinated in 1983, thus sparking a people-backed military mutiny three years later.

Filipinos don’t care about the political dramatics, treating it merely as a telenovela on feuding dynasties. As one general quipped in a chat group of hundreds of fellow retirees, “Wag tayo makialam, away ‘yan ng dalawang magnanakaw.”

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