Former president Rodrigo Duterte’s failed attempt to mobilize the military and police in overthrowing President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. while the latter was in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) proves to all Filipinos that he is a fumbling, washed-out politician who does not only deserve condemnation but prosecution and conviction as well.
His call for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) to withdraw their support from Marcos Jr. for his “fractured governance” is, in itself, the product of an addled mind that contrived a scheme to free his equally addled daughter from being nailed on corruption charges, embezzlement, plunder and sheer stupidity in wasting hundreds of millions of pesos of taxpayer money at the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd.)
Duterte Sr. is doing his worst at this ugly time not only because his daughter threatened to kill Marcos Jr., his wife Liza Cacho Araneta Marcos, and Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez but because he has become an operator for China, which has reportedly bankrolled the Duterte destabilization plot that started with the so-called Quiboloy cult “prayer rallies” in Davao City that petered out elsewhere. Moreover, the Dutertes profited from the “generosity” of Sammy Uy, the suspected big-time ethnic Chinese drug kingpin in Mindanao, who “donated” P2 billion to all of the Dutertes.
As the Chinese say, “make trouble, fail; make trouble again and fail until the very end.” Since Duterte Sr. has become the top Chinese agent in the Philippines, his invitation for the AFP and the PNP to kick out the Marcoses has more steak than sizzle. It cannot be a repeat of 1986 since it is more akin to the 1967 attempt of the ill-starred Yukio Mishima to rally the Japanese military to bring down the Tokyo government, only to be shunned. At least, Mishima believed too much in restoring a fascist past that he had to commit “hara-kiri,” and his lieutenants completed the act by doing the “seppuku,” or beheading the noted novelist. Mishima is consumed by what he thinks is a noble idea; Duterte is sure to be devoured by his own power grab.
But what motivated Duterte Sr. to call for the Marcos Jr. overthrow? His “reward system” was behind it. Remember that he tried to win the loyalty of soldiers and cops by doubling their salaries in the first few months of his corrupt administration. He did so at the expense of millions of government employees whom he left out to dry. Duterte Sr. was never an “equal opportunity” leader as he prefers to pay huge sums to his murderers, pampers his political allies with their bloody share of the public kitty, and provides his funders with rentier privileges the way Dennis Uy wangled a big slice of business from 2016 to 2022.
As is usual with the non-thinking Duterte Sr., he had a bromance with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He presented himself squarely as a Chinese puppet, to the consternation of top AFP and the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), who battle the Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) and Chinese fisheries militia who maintain the myth that the South China Sea (SCS) is China’s lake despite the July 12, 2016 ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague that Chinese historical claims over Panatag Shoal and other maritime features in the Spratlys as “worthless.”
The AFP and the PNP, which are now engaged in uprooting the more than 400 POGOs that Duterte Sr. allowed to operate aside from the 43 that were officially approved, know for a fact that China is the country’s top adversary, and more than 75% percent of Filipinos regard it as the biggest threat to national security. Dozens of surveys have proved this to be true, despite attempts by Duterte Sr. and Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio to deodorize the rotten image of the Chinese. Likewise, the efforts of the Chinese lobby to influence public opinion have gone to the dogs, with Filipinos mocking and ridiculing the traitors who work for the Chinese Embassy and using the Kamuning Bakery as the staging ground for their pro-Beijing propaganda war.
Despite trying to mobilize people for their “vigil” at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center (VMMC) in Quezon City where Sara’s chief of staff, Atty. Zuleika Lopez, was taken after being detained for contempt by the House of Representatives, and assigning the bogus NPA leader Jeffrey Celiz and his partner-in-crime, Lorraine Badoy Partosa, as “mass leaders” for the paid “vigil” at the EDSA Shrine, the Dutertes have achieved nothing. Duterte’s latest political carnival is a bad cover of St. Saens’ “Carnival of the Animals.” The animals do better music than retarded politicians dreaming they have a right to control Malacanang for more than 100 years. The entire problem with the miscalculating Dutertes is that they never realized that they were a failure as they worsened the COVID pandemic, stole pandemic funds, allowed Pharmally and its Chinese owners to enrich themselves through the operations of Bong Go’s clone, killed 30,000 people in their bogus drug war and enlarged the debt stock. Filipinos need the Dutertes like a hole in the head. Imprison them.
