[Newspoint] The battle is joined

With the emergence of a figure around whom civil society can rally around, it can now be said: The battle is joined.

Risa Hontiveros cannot be more perfect for the role. For one thing, she is ready, willing, and able. She’s not one to seek any leadership draft, but when duty calls, she steps up, and does it for the right reason.

It’s a trait belatedly recognized. Hontiveros’ low numbers at the polls, viewed shortsightedly before, no longer seem to matter, which to me suggests an awareness, finally, that the nation is in for a moral fight and that it, therefore, calls for a righteous leader. 

A coalition of political and rights groups made the choice. It’s not usual for such a choice to go unquestioned in an opposition comprising groups always vying for ascendancy, the precise reason they are unable to come together. The rare consensus on Hontiveros has to do, I think, with her being the exact opposite of her rival. 

Unlike Hontiveros, who humbly waits to be called, Sara Duterte is hot for the presidency — openly, desperately hot. But let’s save that issue for later discussion and meantime take up the most relevant point of comparison — values. In that respect, one frightful fact says it all about Duterte: she is her father’s daughter — it’s all in the blood. 

The Duterte patriarch, Rodrigo, left a long trail of bodies, from extrajudicial killings in his war on drugs, in the wake of his presidency (2016–2022). In fact, he is now in detention in The Hague, the Netherlands, awaiting trial on charges of “crimes against humanity” before the International Criminal Court for those tens of thousands of murders.

Autocracy, corruption, and treason defined his regime. He made it all possible by co-opting the institutions through patronage and threat. 

The trillion-peso scandal that diverted taxpayer money from flood-control projects, many existing only on paper, into the pockets of favored contractors and corrupt officials now appears to have begun once he became president. It was perpetrated through a web of conspiracy so vast, yet, everybody being made happy, so well protected it has not come to light until only now. 

Just as early in his regime, President Duterte ceded sovereignty over the West Philippine Sea to China. The treason eased the way for China’s military control over those waters and its commercial and political incursions inland to advance its neocolonialist designs.

Given the wealth that those waters offer in food resources and gas deposits, not to mention their strategic importance as an international waterway, it should not be hard to imagine how deeply goes China’s covetous interest in them and what price it might be willing to pay to keep a client like the Dutertes. Surely, that kind of deal costs. 

Careful to keep their suspiciously sourced wealth secret to avoid having to account for it, Rodrigo and his family have decided to spend for his defense in The Hague, passing up any court help that was contingent on proof of unaffordability. Lawyers’ fees alone come to nearly two billion pesos a year. 

Also, given the nature of the politics it practices and the skeletons it has accumulated in its closet, the Duterte dynasty has to spend big on propagandized falsehoods to stay in power and escape prosecution — Rodrigo has a son, a grandson, and a nephew in the House of Representatives; the mayoralty of Davao City, a family franchise for over three decades now, is held by a son. 

But it’s Sara who will require expensive shoring up, especially in the immediate and medium term. As vice president, she is, as they say, a mere heartbeat away from the presidency, but still she cannot wait to grab it. In a show of impunity never seen other than as a Duterte trait, she announced hiring an assassin to kill the President when he broke off his political alliance with her family. 

At the same time, in a poorly disguised disregard for the law, she declared prematurely for president for the election of 2028 and has been promoting herself accordingly all over social media. The campaign has taken a sense of desperation that doubtless has to do with trouble she has gotten herself into lately — trouble that could derail her plans.

Next month, Sara Duterte is due to appear in a Senate constituted as an impeachment court, accused for her death threat on the President and also of embezzling hundreds of millions of taxpayer pesos. It is all but conceded that, with a court packed with Duterte loyalists of whom some have corruption cases themselves and, conceivably, are hoping for another Duterte presidency to get them off, the required two-thirds (16 out of 24) vote to convict cannot be garnered. Still, in an open trial, one broadcast live nationwide in fact, and with smoking-gun evidence already previewed in pre-trial hearings in the Lower House, the trial could be decisive in the presidential vote.

As it happens, Hontiveros, as a senator, will be among those sitting in judgment. If, for that, Duterte raised the issue of conflict of interest, she would look laughable and truly desperate — in fact, she would be estopped — impeachment is acknowledged to be a political, rather than a judicial, process. What Duterte should dread is being in the same room as Hontiveros constantly, for all the electorate to see, a situation bound to inspire a juxtaposition of character and abilities. 

But in all likelihood, both as judge and rival, Hontiveros will be frustrated. Duterte does not take up challenges even to basic bravery. She is loath to appear, let alone speak, in public uncoached. She’d rather leave those tasks to her lawyers, her propagandists, her trolls, and her AI.

Sara Duterte is, after all, their concoction. – Rappler.com