I MEAN, of course, Rodrigo and Sara Duterte have bested these inheritors of the Marcos dictatorship, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his cousin, House Speaker Martin Romualdez, in terms of political and mass support.

The duo’s all-out attack that started with Duterte’s ally (and purported financier), religious leader Apollo Quiboloy, in September, involved mainly the disgraceful weaponization of the House of Representatives.

Four committees (the so-called quadcomm) were dramatically combined and weaponized to undertake what mostly have turned out to be theatrical acts to portray Rodrigo as guilty of extrajudicial killings in his war vs illegal drug, and Sara as skimming off her confidential funds.

The second Marcos regime has simply failed. One inarguable indication of this is the fact that not a single senator — all of whom, whether they are crooks or not, whether you like them or not, represent the majority of Filipinos — have joined the Marcos cabal’s plot. Even Sen. Risa Hontiveros, a vehement Duterte-basher has been quiet the past many days, after Duterte tore apart her offensive at the Senate hearing on extrajudicial killings last Oct. 30, and after no other senator backed her attack. Why, even former senator Juan Ponce Enrile desisted from criticizing the Dutertes, and merely said, in his Facebook post, “Let us cool it down for the sake of the country.”

Marcos proved to be vapid in political debate when he took too seriously Sara’s remark that she had hired “somebody” (the word she used, and “not assassin”) to kill him and Romualdez if they kill her. Marcos even uttered the complete non sequitur that if the vice president could make that threat, she could make the same threat against any Filipino.

Puffy

Marcos, his face puffy and looking as if about to break into tears, sent the message to Filipinos that he seemed so afraid of the “threat.” A wittier leader would have responded to Sara’s “threat”: “Is she sure her assassin will complete his task if she is six feet underground?”

There is no other political group — not the Left fronts Akbayan, ACT and Gabriela — that have expressed support for Marcos. The congressmen who persecuted Duterte in the hearings — such as Laguna Rep. Dan Fernandez, Abang Lingkod’s Joseph Paduano (a former member of the urban terrorist group Alex Boncayao Brigade), 1-Riders (as in the “marginalized” motorcycle riders) Ramon Gutierrez and Bienvenido Amante, who claimed a 50,000 membership of his religious group — could not even get their so-called constituents to stage counterdemonstrations to those of pro-Duterte groups. Or maybe that required a totally different co.

Instead, Marcos got his colorless executive secretary, Lucas Bersamin, to issue uninspired statements on the feud. What was a major stupidity in the recent events is Speaker Martin Romualdez calling the entire House to listen to his speech declaring his forever support for his cousin, denying he wants to succeed Marcos when he steps down in 2028, and that Sara merely wants to escape accountability over the use of her confidential funds.

Romualdez’s speech was so uninspired and full of empty motherhood statements that the House didn’t bother to issue a transcript — and it was largely ignored by the media. Romualdez, angry at the many empty seats during his speech, asked those who didn’t attend to submit a written explanation why. I haven’t heard a more artificial and unconvincing speech bordered on the absurd, especially as delivered by an obese man with a slight convergent squint.

Politician

After all, Romualdez was never really a politician. He was the village chief of a small fief of the faraway, poor province of Leyte, a proxy for his aunt Imelda. He never had to do politics, nor address crowds. All he had to do was finance the clans of Leyte during elections. His work mainly has been to oversee his father, the late Benjamin Romualdez’s vast wealth acquired during his uncle Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s strongman rule.

Marcos and Romualdez’s deep flaw is their hubris. They have forgotten that Marcos would not have won the presidency if the Dutertes didn’t back up delivering 60 percent of the votes not just in terms of votes in Mindanao, but because Duterte had such credibility and charisma that Filipinos voted for Marcos on the former president’s say-so.

Filipinos know this. Therefore, they see Marcos as a traitor who — without provocation from Sara — went against her, first by removing as House speaker former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who had been her political adviser, closing the SMNI media that had been supportive of Duterte, and then weaponizing the House to go after her and her father.

Marcos has never explained why he went against the Dutertes so that the only very credible explanation is for him to demonize them, even put them in jail, so Sara will be unable to win the presidency in 2028, enabling Romualdez to capture power, one way or the other.

Anti-Marcos

What the Marcoses also forget is that there is a sizable number of Filipinos, I estimate 30 percent, who are anti-Marcos diehards, who believe they impoverished the country with the elder Marcos’ management and corruption during his one-man rule.

After nearly 40 years, successive governments since Cory Aquino have been unable to get back at least $10 billion (equivalent to half a trillion pesos today, excluding interest) that his clan allegedly stole. And Marcos and Romualdez are claiming Sara must fully explain the use of her P250 million confidential funds?

What happens now? If the Marcos camp insists on putting the Dutertes in jail, there will undoubtedly be a coup assisted by a people-power type of uprising. If they don’t, the feud will just simmer on, with the 2025 senatorial elections increasing Sara’s political support that Marcos may even decide to step down from power on some health excuse. At 46 years now, all Sara has to do is wait four years and not commit some colossal political blunder. Nobody is on the horizon to challenge her in 2028.

We suffer of course because we miscalculated in 2022 the intention of the Marcoses. So much for my faith in humans.

The big question is whether the Americans can find a successor as servile to it as Marcos has been. The stakes for continuing to have their puppet as president is too high, as the Philippines has become under Aquino III and Marcos Jr. a crucial missile base in a war with China.

Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao

X: @bobitiglao

Website: www.rigobertotiglao.com