“Ironically these disgruntled employees are being passed off as a posse of credible witnesses all herded to overturn the results of the 2016 US elections.

One of Rodrigo Duterte’s most rabid critics for whom everything the President does is wrong is not only a bona fide member of the elitist class that supported the last administration but had gone head over heels to peddle for its perpetuity first in 2016 and then again in 2019’s midterm elections.

In the United States the analogy of the swamp has been applied to describe the traditional bourgeois bureaucracy that has infested Washington DC for decades. Funded by the wealthy and entrenched rich who fatten the coffers of political action committees (PAC), part of the toxic DC “swamp” are traditional politicians many of whom populate the Democratic Party (Dems).

In the Philippines, the Liberal Party (LP) and the cabal that supports it, whether from those self-styled steak commandos comfortably bankrolling from their stately East Hampton homes (Hillary Clinton’s former neighborhood) in New York, or those holding office in sprawling mansions in New Manila, these represent our version of the DC political swamp.

In 2016, their universes were literally overturned when mainstream constituencies from the rust belt in the United States to the boondocks and sticks in our rural countryside chose to replace the elitist royalty with nationalist and populist leaders who prioritized both the “forgotten men” in America and the victimized poor in the Philippines.

Super PAC in the US and their virtual counterparts in the Philippines would however not stand down and allow democracy to decide who leads and who does not. In the Philippines the LP and its salivating kennel of attack dogs including paid hacks and deeply blue-blooded media such as Duterte’s rabid critics will simply not let democracy have its way.

In both 2016 and the senatorial race in 2019, the depth of these pundits’ political analysis had been betrayed and proven flawed, overwhelmed as it was by extreme partisan bias and a propensity to perpetuate personal elitism. Never mind that since 2016, such elitism has been debunked and proven antithetical to electorate focused democracies from the United States to our neck of the woods.

Praying that Duterte would face the kind of impeachment inquiries as that inflicted on Donald Trump by the Dems, our Duterte critics observed that the witnesses called by US House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff were drawn mostly from the lower rungs of the American bureaucracy. Interpreting that as an exercise in true democracy one pundit hoped against hope that similar traitorous factotum among our civil servants might likewise betray our President.

Here is where hate overwhelms intellect, obfuscating basic truth and clouding analysis.

Schiff’s witnesses were drawn from the deep state out to sabotage the 2016 vote. To understand the prevalent bias, let’s scrutinize Schiff’s witnesses.

All lost their jobs when Trump’s administration came in and this effectively turns the Dems-sponsored impeachment inquiries into a grand gripe session.

Included among those disgruntled were those fired as a result of a new president who’d won on the promise that he would drain the swamp. Ironically these disgruntled employees are being passed off as a posse of credible witnesses all herded to overturn the results of the 2016 US elections.

Note the bull among them. One overheard another speaking over the phone presumably to Trump. The witness boldly claimed he heard the president on a call that he wasn’t even on. Literally that’s hearsay, and far from evidence considered as first hand. All summed up, not one of the witnesses had interacted with Trump personally and their testimonies reflected that. All were twice-removed hearsay, or hearsay of hearsay.

Worse, every witness upon questioning confirmed that there was neither bribery nor extortion. And all stated that there were no crimes committed. If these constitute damning testimony that our own Congress might learn from and apply against Duterte, then indeed hate may have just replaced evidence and democracy be damned.