by Diego Morra
In fact, the daughter of detained unlamented ex-president Rodrigo Duterte was bragging to everyone that without her, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. would not have won the presidency against Leni Robredo. Some wags attached like leeches to Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio have pompously declared that the Marcos could only rely on 31% of the voters; without the Duterte mojo attached to her, an unknown quantity in national politics, Bongbong would have lost.
Clad in the darkest shirt she could find to announce her dark ambition two days after refusing to say anything about her 2028 presidential run, Sara luckily delivered her one complete paragraph political announcement: “I am Sara Duterte. I will run for president of the Philippines… It took me 47 years to understand that my life was never meant to be only mine… Unlike others, I may not have been born just to chase happiness.” Whoever wrote those pitiful sentences that no one wants to be privy to Sara’s stream-of-consciousness musings. Some people actually promised to be wild, like Richard Speck, who massacred nurses in Chicago, and had a tattoo saying so, and Sara could even be wilder.
Wala itong binatbat sa mga naniniwalang ang kanilang kapalaran na mamuno ay iginuhit ng tadhana. Yet, it is possible that some divination or calligraphy by a temple priest pointed to an excellent declaration on Feb. 18, a day after the Chinese year of the horse was ushered in. Or are we talking of the Jewish Sara consulting the kabbala to predict a sanguine future for her, whether in The Hague (with the copious Arturo Lascanas testimony tagging her involvement in the Duterte Death Squad or DDS) or in the Philippines. Not eloquent and distinctly sophomoric, her Feb. 16, 2025 declaration did not strike anyone like a bolt of lightning.
She had been campaigning for the presidency since July 1, 20222 and ambition consumed her after the President appointed another fellow to be Defense secretary. Sara taught she had sewed it to become the first-ever female defense chief in Philippine history. It was not to be as the better logic of those around Bongbong told her to be wary of Sara’s moves. A pall of doom naturally descended on Sara, who grudgingly accepted the Education portfolio. Sara wanted to command an army, not millions of kids whose intelligence was impoverished by a policy fraught with error, and ignorant about the real state of education.
In less than two years, she would quarrel with classroom walls and educational materials and demand that wall be stripped of unwanted teaching aids. Sara sounds as if her body and soul were designed for service to others (a la Bong Go), reminding everyone about that Lenten movie “All Mine to Give” during the 1950s. Sara’s version? “All Mine to Lose.” We ought to remember Albert Einstein’s wisdom when talking politics, particularly the narcissistic politics of the Dutertes. “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them,” Einstein said. Tweak it to read: “We cannot solve our problems with the same leaders who worsened them.”
On the very first day in office, the pernickety Sara immediately demanded the purchase or lease of 13 satellite offices and four extension offices in politically strategic placed nationwide. The demand stumped Palace officials, with some of their jaws dropping on the floor as Sara sought confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) for the Office of the Vice President (OVP) in the amount of P125-million. Sara was not entitled to the money sourced from the Contingent Fund (CF) of Malacanang since the OVP budget she was working on was covered by the appropriations for Robredo, who got zero CIF for six straight years. Sara was accountable for the millions of pesos in her purported CIF in the final 11 days of 2022 just as she continues to be accountable for the P12-billion in disallowed expenditures at the Department of Education (DepEd.) She abandoned DepEd in June 2024 after long periods of absence and for messy classroom program that produced only 24 classroom buildings under her watch. Add to that the payoffs to officials responsible for purchases of laptops and other equipment and the firings of career employees who did not follow her orders.
Sara suddenly remembered on Feb. 18 that the reason he left DepEd was her “true concern for teachers and the youth.” This doesn’t square with the facts since the disbursements her trusted officers made defied physical laws and the impossibility of bilocation. Even with time dilation, his disbursing officers could not have physically delivered cash to scores of regions within 21 hours. Quantum entanglement applies only to subatomic particles. She was so concerned with the youth that it was proven she had paid for youth summits subsidized by the Philippine Army (PA) and local government units (LGUs), belying the OVP claim, that scores of millions were, indeed, paid to inoculate the elementary pupils and high school students from “ideological” influences, as if the Duterte necromania and normalizing extrajudicial killings were “virtuous.” Ah, never forget that Sara also remembered that she had spent scores of millions for Mary Grace Piattos and her bunch of informers to clear up the minds of children. Clear conscience for those who don’t use it.
The way Sara talks conveys the lie that she had worked 24/7 for the best interest of the Filipino people. This is flat-out gibberish. She “confessed” that in the first few months of their political honeymoon, she already “saw the lack of honesty from Bongbong Marcos Jr. in fulfilling the promises made during the campaign and his sworn duty to the people.” There goes your Joan of Arc who watched the Taylor Swift concert in Germany with her brood as Filipino died as disaster struck, with floods stealing livelihoods, destroying houses and the country losing billions in crops and livestock. “Because I could not bear being part of the 2025 national budget that was riddled with corruption, I chose to leave the Cabinet — even though I knew since 2023 that the consequence would be my impeachment,” Sara argued. So, squandering P612.5-million wasn’t plunder, the billions in useless flood control projects in Davao City wasn’t corruption. Sara’s campaign is the longest in history, and her early salvo for the 2028 presidential run is nothing but a damp squib.
