Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio doesn’t need an “assassin, “hitman” or “hired gun” to eliminate Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr., Liza Cacho Araneta Marcos, and Ferdinand Martin Romualdez and pave the way for her ascension to power. All she has to do is to fancy herself as the reincarnation of the Gorgons, the three female monsters in Greek mythology who murder people by simply looking at them.
Of course, she knows Medusa, or the Queen, Stheno, the mighty, and Euryale, whom the Greek poet Hesiod described as having snakes for hair, wings, tusks, and scales. Fancying herself as Medusa, Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio could just take a long, hard look at the trio and, voila! they will all end up dead, no need for the kibosh during trial, and what the heck about contract killers? In her latest attempt to extend her victimhood, Sara insists she wishes everyone the best during the Christmas season, but not her critics, particularly the Makabayan Coalition, that persistently worked on her illegal disbursements of P125 million cadged from the Palace.
The Palace maintains Sara is accountable for it since the money came from the Contingent Fund (CF) and was not an advance for her “confidential and intelligence funds” or CIFs since by law the 2022 budget had zero appropriation for the CIF of the outgoing vice president Leni Robredo. Robredo did not have a single centavo of CIF in the six long years that she served as vice president of the unlamented Rodrigo Duterte. Since she was not entitled to the CIF under the General Appropriations Act of 2022, she is mandated by law to reimburse the republic for every red centavo she spent for her illegal CIF in that year. Sara may engage in legal trapeze and create her logical horrors but the law says that the sauce for the goose must also be the sauce for the gander. No law or tradition compels Congress to earmark hundreds of millions of pesos in CIFs for the Office of the Vice President (OVP.)
In all probably, and in the light of the fractured governance theory of Duterte Sr. and Jr., they consider the OVP as co-equal to the Office of the President (OP), thus creating four branches of the government, the executive, the OVP, the judiciary and the legislature. Under this Dutertist, scandalous proposition, Marcos Jr. must share power with Duterte Jr. but failed to do so when he named another fellow to hold the defense portfolio, shunting off Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio by the wayside. Surely, she considered the Department of Education (DepEd) as a consolation prize. She was miffed no end when her supposed mentor, unlamented ex-president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, lost her sinecure at the House of Representatives, the result of yet another coup plot that went haywire. For this, Sara tagged Romualdez as “tambaluslos,” forgetting that another “tambaluslos” walked the hallway of YMCA Manila.
Denied her preferred turf, Duterte Jr. and Sr. unleashed unremitting attacks on Marcos Jr. and his cousin, Romualdez, from being lazybones to wasting billions of pesos in local and international travels. Out of nowhere, the call for Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio to replace Marcos Jr. materialized, their puny “tatsupao” slogan plastered in communities preferred as assembly points for “hakot” crowds. Soon, the Dutertes were ridiculing Marcos Jr., forcing Liza Marcos to slam Sara for laughing herself hoarse as speakers lambasted her husband. Then, the call for a separate Republic of Mindanao was raised, only for Duterte Sr. to deny he intended to carve out Dutertistan out of the already-reduced Mindanao.
When Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio abandoned DepEd in July 2024, thousands of teachers and employees were greatly relieved. Soon, documents filtered out about the monthly payoffs to top officials in charge of computerization and awards of projects, with the ousted DepEd undersecretary Gloria Jumamil Mercado producing the envelopes that Sara, the cash dispenser, gave her for nine months at P50,000 per month. Sara’s excuse was that Mercado was a disgruntled employee, but soon, at least three top DepEd executives confirmed that they received money from Sara through the Fajarda couple, and they were not disgruntled officials. Cornered almost daily, Sara resorted to squid tactics, accusing Liza of being her mentor on payoffs, an allegation that Malacanang laughed off.
Worse, lesser officials confirmed that hundreds of millions were spent on the 13 satellite offices of the OVP along with three extension offices, for a total of 16. No other vice president in the history of mankind ever established so many unnecessary offices, capitalized on the average at P64-million each. Sara must be obsessed with palaces and mansions as she also spent millions for the rent of 34 “safehouses” in Bonifacio Global City (BGC) where scores of millions were also dispensed as “rewards” to spooks with such strange names as “May Grace Piattos, “Kokoy Villamin,” “Fernando Tempura,” “Reymunda Jane Nova,” and “Carlos Miguel Oishi.”
Pathetic as it seems, Sara is damaged goods, as damaged as those engaged in ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank, the scourging of Jesus Christ, the extermination of Amalekites (the descendants of Noah), and the implementors of Mosaic law that called for a “tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye,” which Mahatma Gandhi savaged as a principle that will make the entire world go blind. Now, she is not even toying with the dog-eared quip made famous by Jews— “we will forgive but we will never forget.” She wants fire and brimstone to fall on her critics. Yet, it was Sara herself who foisted all the problems upon herself. Medusa doesn’t want to look at the mirror, like Sara.
