by Diego Morra
The Duterte political dynasty is apparently obsessed with solipsism, thinking that it determines reality, dictates the truth and imposes the law, and the rest of country can go hang. Its members behave as badly as they think. They have no truck with how they are perceived by the Filipino people. The unadulterated arrogance is mirrored in the conduct of Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio, Rep. Apollo Duterte and Davao City Vice Mayor Sebastian Duterte. Add Kitty Duterte to the mix and you get some sticky political porridge.
The prevailing attitude is that Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio is destined to become president of this benighted country, never mind her ignorant defense of financial impunity at the Office of the Vice President (OVP), the billions of pesos in disallowed expenditures at the Department of Education (DepEd) and the long trail of misconduct, from plagiarism of a children’s picture book, payoffs to department officials and the multilocality of her finance officers who physically disbursed millions in various regions within 24 hours. Physical laws do not apply to them since they can be in various localities at the same time, dueling with the principles of quantum mechanics.
Sara, who suffers from selective amnesia even as she swims in hubris, has also turned legal theories upside down in her vain effort to deflect, distract and deceive not only the legislature but the entire Filipino nation and maintain her purported status as a president-in-waiting for six years. If you go by her eldritch logic, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. won in 2022 because of her, and her handlers had massaged her ego by claiming that the Marcoses only enjoyed 31% electoral support, and the 69% came from her teeming millions of supporters, never mind if they came to know her only six months before the elections. In their calculus, Marcos Jr. would be a dead duck midway his term and thus could be shunted aside. Or in street lingo, pipitikin lang laglag na.
Of course, Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio had been salivating to wear the crown since 2023, when she clashed with congressional leaders and showed her contempt for Malacanang after she was not appointed defense secretary, which she probably thought was her prize for sliding down as the spare tire for Marcos Jr. The tiff with then Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez was a sideshow after the “reshuffle” at the House of Representatives “demoted” Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. These two incidents became her “casus belli,” and, like the cabbage theory of the Chinese, attack the vulnerable first before directing the fusillade at the strong point. Tagging Romualdez as “Tambaluslos” was the least of the insults that Sara’s camp spewed against the Leyte lawmaker, who was as assiduous as Duterte Jr. in planning to win the presidency.
By propagating the ugly Tambaluslos tag on Romualdez, she thought that it was one down, more to go. Upping the ante, she clashed with Marcos Jr. and his wife, whom she regarded as her “mentor” in the improper disposition of public funds. After resigning from the DepEd, Sara willy-nilly fired broadsides against the Marcoses, threatening the dump the remains of Marcos Sr. in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) and threatening to behead Marcos Jr., and instructing an assassin to assassinate the couple in the event she is killed or dies. She introduced to the English language the concept of conditional threat. Wait until she invents such weird monolexemes, which are words with single meanings, as transactional threat, redeemable threat, quasi threat and threat that amuses. A threat is a threat. It cannot have other meanings the way colors in the chart cannot be defined in multiple ways.
Sara fails to understand that the vice presidency is something like her Davao City Dreamland, where she can exercise the power of life and death over her subjects, and whatever Sara wants, Sara gets. Manila is a different animal, and the large national constituency cannot be cajoled or amused by the faulty logic of her father and the daily, sophomoric statements of his Man Friday, now Sen. Christopher Lawrence Tesoro Go, or CLTG, the letters festooned on a huge construction company in Davao City. Thus, when the issue of the P125-million wasted in the dying days of 2023 by her office was laid bare by the sleuths of the Makabayan Coalition, Sara was flummoxed. Then the deluge came like the floods of Davao City. Then hundreds of millions spent for satellite offices, extension offices and whatever-it-is offices of the already existing Office of the Vice President (OVP.) The scores of millions for “informants” and the fake expense for a program funded by the military, the millions stashed in regional offices of the Department of Education (DepEd) and the billions of disallowed DepEd expenditures.
Faced with scores of issues that she could not explain, clarify or debunk, Sara’s reaction was to refuse being investigated, insulting lawmakers and demanding that the probers be replaced. Then, the facile retort that she was being pilloried because she had clashed with the Marcoses became completely risible. It had nothing to do with the mountain of evidence produced. Lately, she even asked Kabataan Rep. Renee Co if she were related to resigned Rep. Zaldy Co after the young lawmaker asked her inconvenient questions. Od course, the Kabataan lawmaker is not related in any way, shape or form to the ex-Bicol legislator who may be angling for a trip to Mars.
The Duterte dreamland is alive and well in Pulong and Baste as well, the former agreeing to be questioned about the P52-billion allocation for his district and days later retreating, claiming the Independent Commission on Infrastructure (ICI) does not cover lawmakers, despite several Congress members already appeared and acted as resource persons before the commission. Baste is also in some kind of stupor, challenging a top police officer to a fisticuff only to withdraw and flee to Singapore. He lost the match as he mysteriously disappeared, like his father did in 2003 after challenging broadcaster Waldy Carbonell to a gunfight at the Davao City Hall corral. Carbonell waited an eternity for Digong to appear at the site of the duel, only to be told later that the brave warrior of a mayor was already in Taiwan. Their dreamland bubble has been pierced and it burst. It burst in The Hague for Digong. It continues to burst here in his shattered Dutertistan.
