Bongbong Marcos dismissed his vice president as “unimportant” and described her latest explosive outbursts as a “storm in a teacup.”
The idiom is commonly used among tea-drinking English people, and he must have learned it while attending British schools in the 1970s.
The idiom, though, has ancient roots. A Roman statesman and orator, Cicero, wrote, “Excitabat enim fluctus in simpulo,” meaning “stirring up waves in a ladle.”
Marcos thought his vice president was raising a lot of unnecessary issues about matters that were not important.
In short, listening and answering to what Sara Duterte was raising publicly was only a waste of time.
She should first answer the questions raised by lawmakers on how she had spent her confidential and intelligence funds.
She was avoiding accountability and throwing back allegations against the president, accusing him of masterminding plots to kill her with a member of the Presidential Security Command.
The allegations, however, were baseless because security authorities never got a report about death threats and attempts on her life.
Sara’s arrogance and behavior toward the House of Representatives, who looked into her finances, earned the ire of lawmakers, who have started discussing moves to impeach her.
In a surprise move, Marcos dissuaded his political allies in Congress from filing an impeachment complaint against Sara Duterte.
The President said she did not deserve the attention she was trying to create.
Sara shot her foot, committing blunder after blunder that exposed her political weaknesses.
She imploded in front of the public, and her efforts to recover from her outbursts were too late.
She now faces criminal cases for issuing threats on the life of the president, the first lady, and the speaker of the lower house of Congress.
She also faces a separate criminal case for obstructing the transfer of her chief of staff to a military hospital.
In a fit of unnecessary anger, she threatened to assassinate the president, saying she had contracted a would-be assassin.
Her denials were futile because she twice said the threat was not a joke.
Former president Rodrigo Duterte attempted to save her by calling on the Armed Forces to stage a mutiny. But the call fell on deaf ears.
The former president and his daughter were forced to draw their last card – call on their supporters to protest at EDSA Shrine, hoping that their actions would snowball into a popular uprising that could result in a regime change.
It was an expensive option. The Dutertes have to sustain the protest by mobilizing and feeding supporters.
The Dutertes are dreaming of replicating the spontaneous EDSA “People Power” uprising in February 1986 that toppled the Marcos dictatorship.
The Dutertes forgot that the first two popular EDSA uprisings fought for a cause – injustice, corruption, and the restoration of democracy.
The people who had gathered at the EDSA Shrine were fighting for a lost cause. They were really defending corruption, because Sara Duterte could not explain where her confidential and intelligence funds were spent.
Her office submitted acknowledgment receipts with fictitious names taken from snack foods like Tempura, Oishi, Piattos, and Nova.
It’s difficult to defend corruption. Her supporters are not standing on moral high ground.
The Dutertes’ supporters could protest all they wanted for days, weeks, and months. But expect no regime change because the mass actions have no popular support.
Religious and business leaders were nowhere to be found and no military intervention is expected.
The main ingredient of a successful uprising is spontaneous popular support, which was absent in the Dutertes’ EDSA gathering.
In the two EDSAs in 1986 and 2001, there was also military participation. The Dutertes have failed to convince the Armed Forces, which remain professional and non-partisan. It remains loyal to the Flag, the Constitution, and the chain of command.
Duterte is no longer in the chain of command. Neither is Sara Duterte. From the president, who is also the commander in chief of the Armed Forces, the command goes down to the secretary of national defense and the chief of staff.
That could be a reason why Sara wanted to become defense secretary. She would not just be an earshot away from the presidency but could also gain control of the military.
However, Marcos was clever enough to deny her request and assign her to a Cabinet position where she could easily fail, given her experience, attitude, and behavior.
All her life, her positions were given to her on a silver platter. She was an absentee local official, Cabinet member, and vice president.
Marcos did not lift a finger to demolish her. It was her undoing when her powers were clipped, and the sources of her funds dried up. She is now very vulnerable. She is now unimportant.
The Dutertes are now relying on an outside friend – China. But, how long could China sustain support for the Dutertes? If it sees the handwriting on the wall that the Dutertes will not succeed, it will cut support.
It is very difficult to support the Dutertes after the congressional inquiry exposed the family’s links to a Chinese drug cartel and its efforts to eliminate a rival cartel and kill 30,000 people in six years.
The same Chinese drug cartel may have benefitted from gaming operations and billions of pesos of contracts during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Although lawmakers still have to dig deeper into the linkages between POGO, the drug trade, and extrajudicial killings, there is circumstantial evidence to show the interconnection of these criminal activities.
The possible entry of the International Criminal Court (ICC) could be the final nail in the coffin that would bury the Dutertes into oblivion.
However, Marcos should not block any impeachment motion from the lower house. He may be worried that he could be accused of masterminding the impeachment.
Marcos should let the political process go on. After all, he describes the Dutertes’ rants and actions as “a storm in a teacup.”
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