by Diego Morra
For more than two years, the Duterte political warlord dynasty never stopped plotting to oust the administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., and it came after Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio, an unknown quantity before she was pushed to run for vice president in 2022, hatched a scheme to force Marcos Jr. to quit and hand over political power to her as if it were candy. There was no rhyme or reason for this but it falls squarely on a bigger plot, which is to hand over to China all the maritime features in the South China Sea (SCS) and the West Philippine Sea (WPS) that Beijing covets.
This is the bigger context of the scurrilous canard dished out by Rodrigo Duterte in July 2016, when the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) trashed China’s historical claim to Bajo de Masinloc, ruling that a feature nearly 1,000 kilometers from China was never possessed or occupied by Beijing for centuries, and, consequently, it could not invoke sovereign rights over it. Moreover, the nine-dash line calligraphy in 1947 done by a Chinese oceanographer on board as US Coast Guard cutter cannot qualify as a historical document. China has been claiming that Chinese mariners “discovered” the shoal 2,000 years ago and surveyed and mapped during the Song dynasty(960 AD-1279 AD.) This fiction has been debunked by the Ricci-Li map of 1602 that the Chinese empire bragged about. The map did not show any part of the Philippine archipelago to be part of that empire.
Yet, the Dutertes were shamelessly carrying water for China, starting when Rodrigo denounced the arbitral award and dismissed it as a huge roll of toilet paper in July 2016, showing to the entire country that he was beholden to China. To show she has a way with her tongue, Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio felicitated China in Mandarin, not in Hebrew, English, Filipino, English or Cebuano. Nice try, but no cigar. The Dutertes knew that for them to oust Marcos Jr., they needed a united front, not with disgruntled Filipinos but with disenchanted Chinese who wanted Marcos Jr. to kowtow to them and allow them to treat Bajo de Masinloc and Ayungin Shoal as extensions of Hainan. This strategic alliance allowed Xi Jinping to promise the moon and the sun to Digong, with billions of dollars in investments not even materializing. Xi Jinping’s tack was to promise heaven but deliver hell, with Chinese corporations violating the Indigenous People’s Rights Act (IPRA) in the dam project straddling Quezon and Rizal.
Of the promised 20 major investments, not even five were redeemed, and the money funneled through Hong Kong registered companies tapping Beijing’s financial spigot. To avoid being accused of financing an army of trolls, China also organized a cadre of willing Filipino accomplices who would tongue bath Chinese leaders and their humanitarian ventures in the Philippines, including propagandists paid modestly to support China’s expansionist claims and belittle the 2016 PCA arbitral award. Choosing certain Filipino companies as partners, China has layered its propaganda outlets, pampering companies like Cale88 Foods with inward remittances to finance the operations of Mans Carpio and his dear wife Sara.
As could be gleaned from the documents presented during the 33rd, 34th and 35th days of the Sara impeachment trial, Calle88 Foods amassed P1.25-billion until last year, when the Dutertes had to organize a defense panel and support the disinformation campaign of the warlord family to sanitize the muddy record of Sara. The Chinese funding had a dual purpose—shore up Sara and weaken the position of the Philippine government on Bajo de Masinloc. When the going got tough, Mans Carpio “junked” his 47.5% interest in Calle88 Foods and “sold” it to another company that the Dutertes also controlled.
The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), motu proprio, could also look closely into the operations of PR outfits, individual columnists and China-backed organizations supported by businessmen moonlighting as columnists. AMLC officials, along with executives of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) may find it strange that their inward remittances skyrocket when PR campaigns are launched to deodorize Chinese abuses and support Sara and the rest of the Duterte dynasty members.
It will not be surprising that two former presidents of the National Press Club of the Philippines (NPC) would end up being linked to the Beijing propaganda outlets, along with a former Arroyo footman, an ousted bureaucrat and some elements still to be weeded out by national security agencies. When Sara started a ruckus with her former campaign manager ostensibly in support of Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, she was not buttressing Arroyo but trying to weaken Marcos Jr., who steered clear of the row at the Lower House even as Sara had started a “grassroots” campaign calling for him to resign.
Inevitably, the AMLC, BSP and other investigative agencies may uncover the complete scheme to use Chinese money, stolen taxpayer funds and illicit wealth to bring down the Marcos Jr. administration. Even the so-called P2-billion “glitch” at the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) that bloated the account of Mans Carpio may not even be a glitch at all as the handler in that bank (tragically, she passed away recently) was a trusted Duterte ally promoted to head the Social Security System (SSS). The impeachment trial has not only opened a can of worms and the Dutertes cannot kick this can down the road. The more they kick it, the bigger noise it creates.#
