ARGUE the legalities as much as you can, but after more than a month of hearings, the unmistakable impression is that the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte has been a dud. Watch it as I have, and there’s no other description: Boring as Atty. Lorna Kapunan’s asking questions to an auditor.

The Filipino word “pilit” is also an apt description of it: being forced beyond rationality. As such, the real reason why so much of the Congress’ time and resources have been devoted to it becomes crystal clear: To prevent Sara from running for office in 2028.

That it is a flop becomes so obvious if one were to compare it to the trial of President Joseph Estrada 25 years ago, in which actual witnesses testified — not bureaucrats testifying on glorified hearsays put in reports.

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THAT is the question staring at the faces our defense secretary, the mad-looking Philippine Coast Guard officer Jay Tarriela and others screaming that the Chinese are blocking and water-cannoning our Navy and Coast Guard personnel from approaching the BRP Sierra Madre, grounded at Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal. Answering that question would dispel the US-manufactured fog of obfuscation and lies over this issue.

In 1995, to protest China’s building of small facilities on stilts at Mischief Reef, President Fidel Ramos tried to raise international outrage against the Chinese by undertaking a risky operation. Over two dozen foreign and local journalists were ferried by a World War II vintage Landing Ship Tank (LST) near the area, and from there were flown by Huey helicopters that the vessel had strapped on its deck over the Chinese facilities at Mischief Reef. The journalists in at least eight fly-overs took photos of the facilities. In propaganda terms, it was a resounding success, as the photos were widely published all over the world, purportedly the first photographs of what the US and Western press said were proof of Chinese aggression.

However, in terms of our claims over the area, it meant a big blunder. Two Chinese maritime surveillance ships and a fishing vessel blocked the Sierra Madre near Ayungin on its way to get closer to Mischief Reef.

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IN his 1796 farewell address, George Washington, dubbed the Founder of the USA, cautioned the young American republic against exactly the trap that Philippine foreign policy has walked into: 

“A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. It seduces a country into the illusion of an imaginary common interest, drags it into a participation in quarrels and wars without adequate inducement or justification.”

The flip side is just as corrosive: antipathy toward another nation “disposes each more readily to offense, inflaming grievances that sometimes impel to war.” Washington’s verdict on any nation trapped in this posture was blunt: It “is in some degree a slave.”

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SEN. Panfilo Lacson’s office did not like my July 22 column comparing his ballooning net worth to Vice President Sara Duterte’s, and had his “media relations officer” Joel Locsin — a mysterious fellow — write this paper a letter titled “‘Setting the record straight on Lacson’s alleged ‘unexplained wealth.’”

Oddly, “Locsin” has no digital footprint — no Facebook, X, TikTok, or any social media account, while even my caddy has one. No media colleague has heard of him. One wonders whether “Locsin” is the senator’s alias — the name sounds like Lacson spoken quickly. The two names differ only in two letters. “Locsin” also suggests a relative of two titans of media, Teodoro Locsin Sr. and my former boss, Raul Locsin. This paper should verify if letter-writers are real.

But if Locsin is real, Lacson should fire this staffer in charge of media relations who doesn’t track what’s being reported online.

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PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr. certainly scored a lot of points when he announced within the first two minutes of his State of the Nation Address (SONA) that the Ombudsman is “close to filing a lot” (patong patong) of (corruption) charges against the former House speaker. He couldn’t get himself to name the person referred to, his cousin Martin Romualdez, though.

I’m not holding my breath though. We’ll know it’s for real only when the Ombudsman sends that cousin to jail, as fast as he did the most articulate opposition senator, Rodante Marcoleta, as well as former congressman Michael Defensor. 

We could be moving into “interesting times” with Marcos’ announcement. Romualdez said angrily in an April video message: “If this is a political play to push me out and close the story, tarnishing my name and my reputation, then I am telling everyone now: I will not go quietly, and I will not go alone. I will not be the fall guy for other people’s corruption.” Many interpreted the “other people” as Marcos and his wife.

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THE most damning indictment of Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration is not any single scandal, but the pattern. Since 2022, an extraordinary share of the Marcos administration’s energy, money, and attention has gone not into governing, but into a single, unstated project: making sure the Marcos clan survives as the dominant Lord of the Realm, and ideally expands, past 2028, when the president’s single six-year term expires.

Marcos is, indeed, the son of the dictator, who clung to power after his second and constitutionally last term by weaponizing the Constitution to declare one-man rule in September 1972.

Charter change, the impeachment war against Vice President Sara Duterte, and the extraordinary decision to hand former president Rodrigo Duterte to a foreign tribunal are not isolated events. They are three fronts of the same battle for continuity in power.

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THE impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte is neither a project to cleanse the government of corruption nor is it a partisan brawl. It has become a struggle for democracy itself, to prevent the Marcos family from thwarting the will of the people, from choosing their president in 2028.

The case against Sara is the most brazen use of constitutional processes as political weapons. It echoes in disturbing detail the way his father weaponized the Constitution half a century ago to cling to power for 13 years.

In 1972, Marcos Sr. was a year from ending his third term, with the Constitution barring him from a fourth term. His archenemy, the fiery opposition leader senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. was inarguably a shoo-in to become president in the 1974 elections. Marcos, however, exploited the martial‑law clause of the 1935 Constitution — intended for genuine emergencies like invasion or rebellion — and bent it into a blanket license for dictatorship.

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THE Senate impeachment court’s ruling allowing the prosecution to subpoena Vice President Sara Duterte’s financial records is being sold by Akbayan Rep. Jose Manuel Diokno as a major victory. In fact, it buries the unexplained wealth article by sharply limiting what financial records can be used.

The court did grant subpoenas for bank records, Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) reports, and Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) documents going back to 2007. But it added a crucial condition: Records from before Sara Duterte became vice president may be used only to establish a financial “baseline,” not to prosecute alleged impeachable acts outside the articles of impeachment. 

That restriction, not the mere issuance of subpoenas, is the heart of the ruling.

The written order makes this explicit. The requested records are “sought to establish the Respondent’s financial baseline and capacity, and not to inquire into or prosecute alleged impeachable acts occurring outside the present Articles of Impeachment.” These “are required to establish a factual baseline against which the Respondent’s assets, financial transactions and business interests during her present term may be assessed.” In simple terms: Pre‑2022 records cannot be used to prove corruption committed before Duterte assumed the vice presidency; they can only show what her legitimate financial position was at that point.

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