đź“·Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra
After refusing to act as the government lawyer in defending the arrest and transfer of custody of the unlamented ex-president Rodrigo Duterte who is now behind bars at detention facility of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Scheveningen prison in The Hague, Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra should do the most decent thing to do under the circumstances—he should resign from his position and perhaps join his law partner ex-executive secretary Salvador Medialdea as Duterte’s counsel.
Since Guevera could no longer function as what his job description demands, and consequently, the Marcos Jr. administration cannot depend on him to argue on behalf of the government before the Supreme Court (SC), the most proper action for the Palace to do at the moment is to kick him out. Here is a case of a faithless partner who argues that since he had already stood against ICC jurisdiction over the Duterte case well before Marcos Jr. threw his previous position down the sewers, he should recuse himself from writing a single sentence in defense of Marcos Jr.’s action. Marcos Jr., should not allow him to recuse by sending him a letter informing him that he is fired.
Better yet, Marcos Jr., Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, Justice Secretary Boying Remulla and the chief of the Presidential Security Command (PSC) should summon him before they cock a snook right at his face. For starters, letting the disingenuous Guevara move known to the press, to the Duterte camp, the broadcast media and the Duterte propagandists led by Malou Tiquia, who are notorious for inventing Trump quotes to support Duterte, is a breach of protocol. Inform your superiors first before leaking it at the “pissoir,” as the French say. For Guevarra to argue that he cannot make an about-face on his previous pro-Duterte tack is a lot of bullpucky as the Americans would say. How many times in the past had Guevarra made a volte-face in the cases that he had handled? Guevarra should return to his old job as Medialdea’s partner, back to where his bread is buttered.
Guevarra’s position has been untenable since 2023, when it became apparent that the Marcoses and the Dutertes would be battling over the spoils of the May 2022 general elections. Moreover, even before the so-called Team Unity “won” the contest, it was inevitable that Marcos Jr., would not grant Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio’s wish that the defense portfolio be offered to her on a silver platter. Moreover, memories are short among the people in Duterte’s coterie. Didn’t they remember that years after Duterte’s “win,” the speakership was promised to someone who looks like Leyte Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, only for one Duterte minion to sabotage, for the benefit of someone who looks like Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano?
Betrayals are a dime a dozen in the Court of St. Digong, and those who stab other people’s backs look like saints during audiences, with courtiers tasked to relay messages acting as influence peddlers and pushing their own candidates to occupy Cabinet positions, the speakership as well as the presidency of the Senate. The same is true with shifting political winds. Pundits said late in 2022 that the so-called Team Unity was only good during the campaign and would not last for two years. It started unraveling in early 2023, when Sara found it not to her liking that her Tita Gloria was stripped of her sinecure at the House of Representatives by Speaker Romualdez and his gang. Thus, Romualdez was tagged as “tambaluslos” by Sara, the Joan of Arc for the oppressed lawmaker from Lubao, Pampanga, the hometown of the unlamented jet-setting Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, the resident preacher at the Pasic City Jail.
“Sumawsaw sa digma ng iba,” quipped a wag, but Sara needed a “casus belli,” a big war, in fact, to weld her name, her “feisty” reputation, her another “change is coming” after the change that came with a blast in 2016 ended as a scam in 2022. Her political lieutenants wrongly tagged Romualdez as the prospective candidate of Marcos Jr. for the presidency in 2028. For Sara, surnames work magic but she misread the name. Romualdez is a Romualdez, as Imee Marcos said, and there are two Marcoses ready for the 2028 draft. Liza is one and Imee is another. By 2034, Sandro Marcos might be groomed to run in the presidential race. The tragedy of people like Menardo Guevarra is that they cannot see beyond their bureaucratic rose-colored glasses that committing suicide for the benefit of a political has-been is typically bad for a calculating lawyer. He had put all his amber eggs in one basket.
While we may not yet see that Guevarra’s goose is cooked, given Malacanang’s protracted decision-making process, his declaration that he will recuse from the case before the SC reminds us of what the great actress Mae West once said: “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” Guevarra was appointed by the Duterte administration to defend all the executive actions of Malacanang, its abuses and contraventions of the law notwithstanding, and Guevarra made a spirited defense of the whole caboodle, justifying the bloody “tokhang” operations, the correctness of such fascist issuances in 2018 as Memo Circular No. 32, which intensified military operations in rural communities in the Visayas, Bicol and in Mindanao, and Executive Order No. 70, which created the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and institutional Red-tagging, which the High Court tagged as a crime and a violation of civil and political rights.
Duterte promised to appoint only the best and the brightest as he vowed that “change is coming” and what did we see? Duterte cursing Obama, the Pope, even insulting his idol Donald Trump, and promising to turn the waters of Manila Bay red in his usual barber shop shtick. Then he ordered the military to shoot female NPA guerrillas in their vaginas to render them “useless,” as if the female reproductive organ was the only reason why women were born. Of course, one should never forget the Duterte directive to goad drug “suspects” into fighting policemen and then shooting them if they’re “nanlaban.” The mendacity of Duterte puts into question whether he understands statecraft, the law, the Constitution, and common sense at all. He hasn’t understood what Gore Vidal meant when he said: “The US was founded by the brightest people in the country—and we haven’t seen them since.” (DIEGO MORRA)
