Remember Peter Joemel Advincula, the hooded witness called “Bikoy” presented by then-Senator Antonio Trillanes as a whistle-blower who linked the entire family of then-President Rodrigo Duterte to the illegal drug trade? 

The virtual telenovela titled “Ang Totoong Narco-list” appeared on a webpage where he entertained the nation with his series of videos demonizing the Duterte family, including the President’s nine-year-old daughter. The bloke later retracted and confessed that his tale was orchestrated and scripted by the Liberal Party and Senator Trillanes. He claimed that the black propaganda was meant to sabotage the administration-backed senatorial bets in the 2019 elections. 

Advincula, after his retraction, apologized to Duterte and his family but not after he revealed that the Bikoy episodes were part of a bigger plot called “Project Sodoma.” The objective was to overthrow Duterte and install the LPs in Malacañang. 

Well, what do you know? We now have “Bikoy” part 2, this time presented by Sen. Risa Hontiveros. One alias “Rene,” who claimed to be a landscaper on Pastor Apollo Quiboloy’s Glory Mountain, had his face covered to conceal his identity just like the hooded “Bikoy.’ At the Senate hearing, the landscaper read his script with ease and spontaneity, eliciting curiosity as to why a talent like him would spend time doing a menial job. 

His “mansion” and “bag” of arms phantasmagoric narrative did not fit the actual settings. There is nothing on Glory Mountain that would come close to a mansion. There is a cabin where visitors would repair for rest and coffee. Arms in bags carried by a President or by Inday Sara, either as mayor or Vice President? Alias “Rene” must have been hallucinating. Sara is known for using her fists in defending temporary settlers whose shelters were illegally demolished, but I still have to see her even with an air gun. The attempt to implead VP Sara in gun-running is simply idiotic. 

There is a saying in Tagalog that is uniquely Filipino. “Hampas sa kalabaw, sa kabayo ang latay.” The literal meaning is: “Whip the carabao, the horse gets lashed.” It means an attack on one is intended for another. Any which way, however, the cowardly and malicious defamation is simply fiendish. 

This Filipino saying finds a simile in the current Senate hearing where Pastor Apollo C. Quiboloy is being lampooned by an unidentified masked witness and being dragged into his script are past President Duterte and VP Sara. 

The Vice President, who has been the object of black propaganda in the House of Romualdez, shrugged off the stage drama directed by Risa Hontiveros in the Senate hall. She expects the vilification campaign against her to continue. Having said that, she remains focused on her job as VP and Secretary of Education and taking time to personally visit calamity-stricken areas, bringing with her hundreds of bags of rice, not guns.

In short, the entire zarzuela in the Senate is a thick smokescreen to cover the negative impact of the immoral attempt to alter the 1987 Constitution via the equally contemptuous People’s Initiative plot hatched by those political characters who want to perpetuate themselves in power. 

Or does this have to do with the now-shrouded plan to build the Philippine International Exhibition Center?

In the meantime, Pastor Quiboloy has been made the whipping boy of modern-day grand inquisitors, demeaning him before members of his congregation and crucifying him in public. I do not know how much more he can take the beatings of the rabid and envious politicians. 

But even as a holy man, he is still a human being. While his patience has absorbed all the beatings, there will come a time when it will snap. While today he is being haunted and hunted, beware when he becomes the hunter himself.