By arguing that he is against the impeachment of his no longer necessary vice president, Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. proved that he will allow himself to be mocked, ridiculed, insulted and subjected to assassination attempts by the Davao City Syndicate (DCS), all because impeachment “will not improve a single Filipino life,” as if he had improved a single Filipino life since June 30, 2022.
For the edification of Marcos Jr., Rodrigo Duterte Sr. sponsored a borrowing binge, with the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse, and arrogated unto himself to spend hundreds of billions of pesos to manage the pandemic. As expected, the crisis spawned the plunder of the national treasury, with Chinese businessmen led by Michael Yang cornering the supply of face masks and another Duterte footman monopolizing the supply of face shields and personal protective equipment (PPE.) The facilitator was no less than another Davao City lawyer, Lloyd Christopher Lao, who was taken out of the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) after controlling an estimated P800 million collected from property developers for socialized housing.
From HLURB, Lao propitiously got seconded to head the newly organized but dubious Procurement Service (PS) for the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) before the Wuhan pandemic shattered the planet. Stranger still, Lincoln Ong, who had introduced as another associate of Bong Go, Duterte Sr.’s long-time valet, shifting from moonlighting for dredging projects to becoming a key officer of Pharmally, the Chinese-Singaporean-Indian company capitalized at P626,000 that cornered multi-billion supply contracts from Lao, who also mysteriously managed the funds of the Department of Health (DOH.) No matter how you look at the syndicated operations of these enterprises, the central and indispensable characters all revolved around Duterte Sr. and Bong Go.
No matter how hard Duterte Sr. tries to extricate himself from the clutches of Chinese characters in Mindanao, he simply couldn’t delete from the fact that he acted as a friend, associate, protector, and political patron of Sammy Uy, Michael Yang, and his brothers, Allan Lim and several Chinese businessmen who had made themselves scarce after several shabu shipments were busted, along with the huge cache seized in Porac, Pampanga stashed away in warehouses protected by politicians and relatives of Michael Yang. Then you have the testimonies of Jaime Gumban, and Col. Eduardo Acierto, both pinned down on the P6.4-billion shabu shipment that Gumban claimed was owned by the Davao Group. Then, there is another fall guy, Mark Taguba, who blew the whistle on how the Davao syndicate gets paid in exchange for safe passage in the green lane of the Bureau of Customs (BOC.)
Whether it is murder or plunder, or plain narco-trafficking, the surname Duterte oozes out of the miasma, giving the lie to the pompous declaration of Duterte Sr. that he despises corruption, and would massacre those engaged in the drug trade. Yes, he did, 30,000 of them, and all because they did patronize the favored drug kingpins. Then, there is the expose of former Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who disclosed that the Dutertes, from the Sr. to the Jr. and then down to the youngest kid, all shared a total of P2-billion in cash and checks from the ever-generous Sammy Uy. Even if the Dutertes engaged in honest, arduous labor, they could not have earned billions, Trillanes argued.
The Dutertes established their own failed state in 2016, littering the country with corpses in the fake six-month campaign to extirpate the drug trade from the country, with the Michael Yangs, Sammy Uys, and Allan Lims applauding at the sidelines, amused no end seeing the Duterte-led eliminating their competitors. Now, Marcos Jr. is also busy deodorizing the same failed state by finding nothing “important” in the impeachment of Sara Zimmerman Duterte, taking a cue from the joke that is Sara and his dad, who wants to clown himself away from problems big and small. Marcos Jr. gives a cavalier treatment to his very oath to protect and defend the 1986 Constitution (yes, he is committed to that, like fried chicken.)
The very allies of Marcos Jr. are dumbfounded to hear that Malacanang wants no impeachment for Sara but cannot say explicitly that may as well give political power to an incompetent, fumbling grafter and recidivist who cannot even manufacture a single bit of credible evidence, or even defend the budget of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) or the Department of Education (DepEd) without a text message or prompting from ever-dearest Atty. Zuleika T. Lopez, cousin of former prosecutor Ruy Elias Lopez, whose political career was ruined by Duterte Sr. Take out the consultants and the brain trust, and Sara, like Bong Go, would squirm, fidget, and seek succor at the lectern. “Sukat na at kulang,” as they would say.
On that basis alone, the impeachment is in order. After fudging her facts, manufacturing her beneficiaries, stealing identities, signatures and dates, using confidential and intelligence funds (CIFs) to which she was not entitled by law in December 2022 and trying to “exploit” what she wants to prove was a “sentient” affidavit, Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio practically demanded that she be impeached. Now, who is Marcos Jr. and his belatedly-recruited allies to insist that the perfectly legal option for citizens would not benefit anyone? What is perfectly untenable is when a national leader comes to the rescue of someone not entitled to immunity to enjoy such in the guise of presidential protection? A close look into the impeachment complaint filed by the 70 citizens who signed the document would show that far from being reviled, they should be decorated with gold medals.
