by Diego Morra
If the nation were to advance economically and socially rather than merely tread water to stay afloat, it must be led by statesmen or stateswomen who know the business of governing, the demands of economic overhaul and who could plan ahead to boost both manufacturing and agriculture, the two departments upon which the republic’s survival rests.
Can the twice-impeached Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio fit the bill required of a leader who can eliminate graft, mitigate corruption and whip a lethargic bureaucracy into line in crafting a doable, viable economic program to generate jobs with decent pay, increase farm and fisheries output and substantially reduce the importations of rice, pork, chicken, beef and vegetables? Since 2022, Sara has not proven that she is industrious enough to be entrusted with any position of leadership. More interested in confidential funds (CF) and obsessed with holding the defense portfolio, she was a disaster at the Department of Education (DepEd) no matter what her Goebbels—Michael Wesley Poa— says.
Sara cannot deny that despite serving two years at the DepEd, she managed to build only 192 of 6,379 classrooms targeted for completion in 2023, based on a report by the Commission on Audit (COA.) It is an outstanding 3% of the target. DepEd officials could not trace how Sara spent the P112.5-million in CF in 2023 despite her claim that the money was used to investigate the P2.3-billion computerizations scam that was handled by the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) during the administration of her father. This is the same PS-DBM that made the P6-billion Pharmally Covid-19 supply scandal possible.
Nonetheless, Sara produced not a shred of evidence that she did, in fact, spend the money for sleuthing on a scam perpetrated during his father’s administration. In another interview, she claimed that the DepEd CF was spent to monitor the “grooming” of primary school pupils and high school students by the New People’s Army. Worse, Sara claimed, against all government regulations that CFs cannot be subjected to investigation since they are, in her best logic, “confidential.”
Other than her elliptical arguments, what people following Sara’s impeachment trial have been flustered with the statements she has been broadcasting lately, like bicycles contributing to the energy crisis, carpooling worsening fuel supplies, quoting Andres Bonifacio when she was repeating Jose Rizal’s quip and quoting verses from William Henley’s “Invictus” wrongly. So, you have three deceased authors being rattled in their graves by Sara’s wayward intellectual proclivity.
She ain’t finished yet as she yammered about being persecuted by a regime that grants her travel authorities to see the world while battering the administration about harassment and incompetence, indolence and clumsiness, and corruption in the corridors of power and the alleys of influence. Can Sara grasp the nettle? Of course not, even with 432 bodyguards and dozens of consultants. In her latest tirades, she accused Malacanang of doing nothing but she wasn’t around when Duterte properties in Davao City were flooded, no thanks to the missing P51-billion for flood control projects in the city.
As to current events, Sara was asked in The Hague about her reaction to the Pax Silica project being pushed by the regime. She was clueless and kept asking whether it was Fox, f*k or even “paksiw.” The vice president is not doing justice to her position, the 32-million digital votes that elected her, and even to herself. Despite the hundreds of millions in the annual budget of the OVP, still she cannot hire intellectually-gifted ghostwriters, sensible inhouse and extraneous plump advisers who are supposed to be second to none in the reputation and image management business.
Finally, Sara was none the wiser in hollering in The Hague that the International Criminal Court (ICC) is a puppet of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and former Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV. This is the first time in history that the ICC, created by the Rome Statute and majority of nations, has been accused of being under the influence of Filipino politicians. Naturally, the ICC was gobsmacked by yet another irrational billingsgate by Sara. The other critics of ICC? The war criminals Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. Sara apparently doesn’t know how the land lies that she continues to make a hash of her defense and the case to free her own father. She has overestimated her digitized voters and underestimated the enraged citizenry miffed by feeble mass actions and the disruptive rallies of the cults backing her. You can remind her what Karl Popper said: “Our knowledge can only be finite. Ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”#
