MY apologies for the harsh words, but then if she can’t stand the heat, she shouldn’t have gone into the kitchen, as they say. I can’t help headlining this column with that after reading Vice President Leni Robredo reportedly saying the other day: “The country can no longer stand another six years of governance similar to President Duterte’s.”

That probably takes the cake in Robredo’s list of vacuities, so many that social media refers to her as “Madumb.” Doesn’t she read newspapers and polls?

Poll after poll have shown Duterte’s daughter Sara ahead as the top choice for president in 2022. For vice president, it is her father. Why? Most Filipinos, including myself, have never heard Sara speak nor have I seen a list of her accomplishments as mayor of Davao City.

To be honest, the image I have of Sara was livid, beating the hell out of a sheriff attempting to enforce a court order over something I don’t remember. Of course, like most Filipinos, I like the photos of her on her big bike or in formal dress with tattoo on her ankle. But are those images enough to get Filipinos to make her their top choice for president to succeed her father?

I may be belaboring my point. Filipinos want her to be president because she is her father’s daughter, even as I’ve heard rumors she doesn’t like to be in her father’s shadow, and that when she assumed office as Davao mayor in 2010, all of her Dad’s people were fired, including now executive secretary Salvador Medialdea and Sen. Bong Go, Duterte’s then executive assistant.

Filipinos want her to be president as she represents Duterte 2.0, the continuity of an administration they’re so satisfied with that his rating has not gone below 70 percent after five years, a record for any Philippine president.

Filipinos – and I am not putting words in their mouths but simply deducing from the surveys – want another Duterte administration so much they’re willing to take the risk that Sara may not be as good as her father.

This is why I put as a headline my claim that Robredo is out of touch with reality: How can she claim that the “country can no longer stand another Duterte kind of administration” when in poll after poll, they say they’ll vote for Sara whom they don’t know but who, at least in their mind, would bring in a second Duterte presidency?

But then somebody being out of touch with reality more often than not means he is out of his or her mind. Which I think, sorry to say, our vice president is. Why would she say publicly something, which I think would even reinforce many Filipinos’ yearning for a Duterte Part 2?

In fact, in that talk with media, Robredo seems to be talking to herself, saying gibberish: “So, sa akin, ang paniniwala ko obligasyon ko. Obligasyon kong maghanap ng maraming mga options hindi para sa akin pero ano ba iyong pagbubuti ng bansa. And iyong sinabi natin na ikabubuti ng bansa, again it’s many different things.” What?

I myself think the issue in 2022 will be essentially “Continuity” vs “??.”

Ungrammatical “??”, but that’s the only way I can abbreviate and emphasize my worry over whoever goes against Duterte’s anointed in 2022.

“??” to mean “Risky” as being a senator for xx years or a policeman for xx years doesn’t at all train one to be in the top executive post of the land. “??” to mean “unknown” as in the case of “Yorme” who has been Yorme only for two years.

Maybe ??? for Manny Pacquiao who just has to release a brain doctor’s findings if he already has (or not) chronic traumatic encephalopathy, otherwise referred to as “punch-drunk” and later “dementia pugilistica,” after having his head banged probably 40,000 times in his 71 fights and sparring sessions.

What is Robredo referring to when she claims the country won’t be able to last another Duterte-kind of governance? She refers to the administration’s handling of the pandemic but gives no details on why she doesn’t like it. If she thinks the government is doing badly, she should just look at the Covid-19 statistics. Yes, our latest ranking in Worldometer’s Covid data is 22nd with 1.7 million cases (No. 1 would be the US, with 37 million). Other countries with high infection rates include India (32 million), Brazil (20 million), France (6.4 million) and our neighbor Indonesia, which has 4 million cases. Doesn’t she think that Duterte’s policy of forming an interagency task force to address the pandemic was a systematic, institutional approach?

I myself, to be frank, would want the continuity of the State’s efforts to finally end the illegal drug plague, crush the communists, strengthen a foreign policy independent of the US, weaken the hold of oligarchs over the country, to subdue an oligarch- and US-controlled media, and build world-class infrastructure.

And Robredo says the country won’t last another six years with these efforts?

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