THE arrest of former House speaker Martin Romualdez and the filing of a plunder case against him, led by Ombudsman Crispin “Boying” Remulla Jr., could become a watershed moment in our nation’s history, a decisive break with our culture of impunity.

The Ombudsman has made accusations; Romualdez is entitled to the presumption of innocence and to test every allegation in court. The Sandiganbayan’s warrant reflects a finding of probable cause, not a final judgment. But just a year ago, Romualdez was considered the second most politically powerful man in the land

He was not only speaker of the House, but also President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s first cousin and principal political lieutenant. Many claimed he was Marcos’ hatchet man, undertaking such projects as revising the Constitution to enable the president to remain in power after 2028 and pushing the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte. Representatives Joel Chua, Gerville Luistro, Leila de Lima, Bienvenido Abante, Ace Barbers and Paolo Ortega — the public faces of the prosecution — are political pygmies compared with the forces arrayed behind Vice President Sara Duterte. Only somebody with Romualdez’s wealth and power could have mounted such an undertaking.

SEN. Panfilo Lacson says the arrest of former House speaker Martin Romualdez should silence those who call President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. a weak leader. Indeed, Romualdez is the president’s first cousin and, until his political fall, the most powerful man in the House of Representatives. A president who permits a nonbailable plunder case to be filed against such a relative, Lacson argues, has shown resolve.

Lacson insults Ombudsman Jesus Crispin “Boying” Remulla Jr. It was Remulla’s office that filed the nonbailable charge for plunder and bribery.

He says it took his investigators 11 months to gather the evidence against Romualdez to be sure it would stand up in court, saying that Romualdez has tons of money to get the best lawyers and even to bribe his way out of it.

One would have to be an idiot not to believe that this latest attack on Sara is President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s desperate move to prevent her from running for the presidency in 2028. Contrast the issuance of an arrest warrant against Sara to the case of former House speaker Martin Romualdez, against whom the Ombudsman special panel of prosecutors filed a case of plunder and direct bribery in July, yet so far no charge has been filed with the Sandiganbayan.

The head of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) who recommended the filing of the criminal charge against Sara is Melvin Matibag, appointed to the post only in February 2026. He has totally no experience in criminal investigation. The head of the Justice department which filed the case is Fedderick Vida, who was appointed to the post only in November 2025. Vida also has no experience in the criminal justice system; the former justice secretary Crispin Remulla took him in first as his assistant secretary and then undersecretary in charge of finance and administration. Vida’s sole qualification for those posts is loyalty as he had been previously the now Ombudsman Remulla Jr.’s right-hand man in Cavite politics.

The judge who ordered Sara’s arrest is the Quezon City Regional Trial Court’s (RTC) Maria Angelica de Ramos, who was appointed to the post straight from a mediocre private law practice in March 2025. Despite the serious controversial issues over a case filed against a sitting vice president, de Ramos issued the arrest warrant in just 18 working days after the case was filed in August by the Justice department. Before this episode, de Ramos’ only public exposure was a press conference in 2022, where she launched an obscure movie she had produced, directed and acted in.

Last of 2 parts

THE impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte is rapidly becoming President Marcos’ biggest, and most costly misadventure.

Twenty trial days have already been consumed, and all the Senate prosecutors have done may be summed up in Sen. Risa Hontiveros’ favorite word: “pinahihiwatig.” The term translates to English as “hint,” “insinuate,” or “imply.” As in Hontiveros’ claim that certain Commission on Audit documents hint, insinuate, or imply the Office of the Vice President’s misuse of funds.

Nobody is convicted either in regular courts or in this special impeachment court for claims that imply, insinuate or hint at a crime. The basic rule of law is that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The stupid belief of Marcos’ boys and girls is that Sara is guilty until proven innocent. One anti-Sara senator, a college drop-out, resorted to calling a witness ”’stupid,” while an expensive, over-the-hump private lady prosecutor resorted to sloganeering.

The prosecution could only present such really useless witnesses as NBI Director Melvin Matibag, appointed from nowhere to the post in February to provide hearsay testimony against Sara; another agency employee pretending to be a digital forensic expert attesting to the authenticity of a video recording; and a staff member of the Office of the Vice President who couldn’t be intimidated into stating that confidential funds released to their office had been absconded.

The “testimonies” — one hesitates to even call them that — produced by the prosecutors are a far, far cry from those in President Joseph Estrada’s impeachment trial — such as those by the whistleblower governor Chavit Singson; Estrada’s finance secretary Edgardo Espiritu; SEC head Perfecto Yasay; and two bank executives, lawyer Manuel Curato and senior vice president Clarissa Ocampo, who were actual witnesses to the ousted president’s commission of crimes.

First of two parts

CONGRESS has managed to convince itself that the nation’s most urgent business is the political fate of Vice President Sara Duterte, in the service of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s overarching agenda since he came to power: Stop Sara from leading the nation by 2028.

Yet if one looks at the legislative agenda that Congress and Marcos themselves have officially agreed upon, the contrast is almost embarrassing. There is a long queue of laws affecting electricity bills, food prices, classrooms, corruption, political dynasties, land use, water, bank secrecy, government budgeting and the structure of our elections. Many have been waiting not for months but for decades.

I am not arguing that Congress may simply ignore an impeachment case properly presented before it. The Constitution assigns to the House the power to impeach and the Senate the duty to try a valid impeachment. But constitutional duty does not require the political class to behave as though an impeachment trial was the country’s central national project. The real cost is not merely the number of hours senators sit as judges. It is the enormous political bandwidth, media attention and legislative energy consumed by a proceeding whose most obvious consequence is to determine who may or may not be a presidential candidate in 2028.

THE Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) announced the other day what would be one of the greatest social achievements in recent Philippine history — if it were true, that is. The number of poor Filipinos fell from 17.54 million in 2023 to 11.08 million in 2025, a reduction of 6.46 million people in only two years. Poverty incidence among individuals, the PSA said, dropped from 15.5 percent to 9.7 percent, while among families it fell from 10.9 percent to 6.4 percent.

I don’t think anybody believes the PSA. It presented a deeply misleading, if not false, picture of the state of our nation, bordering on disseminating fake news.

What it claimed was that 6.5 million Filipinos moved from below to above the very artificial poverty threshold it had invented years ago. It has not established that 6.5 million Filipinos ceased being poor, in the ordinary meaning of that word. At best, the number of our poor remained unchanged and probably even worsened since this corruption-riddled administration came to power.

As usual, the extremely pro-administration Philippine Star and Philippine Daily Inquirer made it their banner headlines, with the former’s “6.5 million Filipinos lifted out of poverty” and the latter’s “PSA: PH poverty hit lowest single-digit level in 2025.” To the credit of The Manila Times editors, they demonstrated editorial maturity by putting the story in the inside pages, in the Business section. The paper also titled the piece, “Poverty rate hits record low of 9.7 percent.” Not “6.5 million Filipinos were lifted out of poverty.”

These headline formulations border on fake news: 6.5 million Filipinos were not lifted out of poverty. The Inquirer even bolstered its good-news-for-BBM, putting on top of its headline the blurb for Social Weather Stations’ founder Mahar Mangahas’ column titled, “Poverty fell slightly in 2026 Q2.” The truth is that the SWS self-rated poverty figures rose from 47 percent in 2023 to 49 percent in June 2026.