Well, THAT was quick. The UniTeam, which had propelled Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte to power, had started to crack not even a year after the tandem’s victory in the 2022 elections.

Political observers perceived the alliance between the two as precarious from the beginning, that it was a mere marriage of convenience. Also from the start, former president Rodrigo Duterte was not exactly gung ho about his daughter’s decision to run for vice president. His daughter should have been president, he was heard to assert before the elections, since “she was the one with the highest ratings,” even as he regarded Marcos as “weak” and a “spoiled brat.”

Still and all, the tandem ran and won by a landslide on 9 May 2022 and on 30 June 2022, they officially assumed their respective posts.

Less than a year later, cracks in the alliance started to show. On 19 May 2023 Duterte quit Lakas-CMD, her political party then which was led by Marcos Jr.’s first cousin, House Speaker Martin Romualdez, apparently in connection with the removal of her long-time ally, Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as senior deputy House speaker.

Two months later, a harsh light was focused on the VP after the Commission on Audit released an audit report showing that she, or her office, had spent a total of P125 million in confidential funds within 11 days during the latter part of 2022.

Later, it was revealed that Davao City, when she was mayor, had spent more in confidential funds than any Philippine city or municipality — P2.697 billion between 2016-2022 — way much more than the confidential funds spending of larger and wealthier local government units like Cebu City, Quezon City, and Makati City during the same period.

In October 2023, the House of Representatives, during deliberations on the 2024 national budget, blocked the confidential fund requests of five agencies, two of which were under the VP — her office for which P500 million was requested and the Department of Education which asked for P150 million.

Thereafter, the VP’s dad and siblings, particularly Sebastian who replaced her as Davao City mayor, started to mount anti-Marcos rallies, subjecting the head of government to harsh verbal attacks, including an accusation by the former president that the incumbent was a drug user and was intent on Charter change to perpetuate himself in power.

Marcos, to his credit, kept his cool, relatively, insisting that he and the VP continued to be tight even as members of her family relentlessly hurled criticisms and insults his way.

And then on Wednesday, 19 June 2024, apparently with no warning and no reason why, the VP quit Marcos’s Cabinet, resigning from both her appointive posts, as education secretary and as vice chair of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict.

Now, the battle lines between the Rodrigo Dutertes and Marcos Jr. have been drawn.

A well-known Duterte supporter was quick to trumpet the VP as the new leader of the opposition, eliciting a reaction from the Liberal Party which stressed that “the genuine opposition puts people first, does not use one’s position to increase and maintain power, does not defend wanted religious leaders, and especially does not play blind to the bullying of fishermen and the brazen actions of foreigners who steal our territories.”

No names were mentioned, but it is a known fact that the VP has defended fugitive televangelist Apollo Quiboloy even as not a few eyebrows have been raised over her keeping mum over China’s trespassing in the country’s exclusive economic zone, their harassment of Filipino fishermen in Philippine waters, and their attacks on food and supplies delivery missions to the BRP Sierra Madre, the country’s territorial outpost deliberately ran aground at Ayungin Shoal and manned by Philippine Marines.

That may be so, but realistically at the moment, no one in the current political landscape can pose a serious challenge to any individual that the establishment might put up to succeed Marcos Jr. in 2028 better than Sara Duterte.

That she chose to quit the Cabinet at this particular time could very well mean that she, with no specific job but to wait as a replacement in case the President is incapacitated, could now go around the country to rally the troops for the 2025 elections and help put allied candidates where they could enable the return of the Dutertes to national power, and her ascendance to Malacañang, in 2028.

VP Sara Duterte (and along with her, her family) has crossed the Rubicon, so to speak. Let’s see what moves will be made by the political establishment in response.