As matters now stand

At the charitable least, branding them as a bourgeoning “counterforce” in the Filipino political right is far more the correct and honest political label.

Branding themselves, therefore, as the relevant “opposition” to the Marcos regime while claiming harassment and repression for being such is disingenuous sloganeering and cant.

Still, being disingenuous isn’t beneath the capacities of rabidly fanatical Duterte acolytes in arrogating to themselves and their thinning ranks the “opposition” label.

This, even as the Vice President herself strongly hints that she doesn’t exactly know what her present political label is after her high profile resignation from the Marcos Cabinet, which was conventionally seen as effectively tearing asunder the “Unity” marker of the present regime.

Conveniently buried, of course, under that disingenuous “opposition” claim is the lethal irony that the previous regime didn’t brook any opposition and literally ran roughshod over vocal critics like imprisoned oppositionist Leila de Lima, who the other week finally won all her politically-motivated illegal drug cases.

Or, for that matter, there’s the fact the former president repeatedly disparaged and threatened leaders of key accountability institutions like the Commission on Human Rights, the Supreme Court, and the Office of the Ombudsman. All of which are still struggling to recover their institutional mandates.

At any rate, current summary political judgments conclude that the Duterte presidency fundamentally used relentless intimidation to weaken any challenges to its authority from all quarters.

That’s a current judgment that validates earlier assessments that the Duterte presidency was qualitatively different from its predecessors because of its willingness to intimidate the opposition, weaken institutional checks, and discard democratic norms.

So there.

Nonetheless, disingenuousness has political logic, particularly in the face of a crucial electoral exercise next year which supposedly will render the electorate’s preliminary verdict of the present regime: whether it’s a qualified success or a disaster.

In that case, the pertinent political logic is to remind us all and the diehard Duterte supporters that the degraded Duterte brand isn’t a spent political force and can still supposedly raise hell fire and brimstone.

Political logic that probably explains the Vice President’s somewhat puzzling announcement recently that her father and two brothers are standing as candidates for the Senate.

Puzzling, for one, since by all accounts the aging elder Duterte’s present health issues indicate he couldn’t possibly stand the rigors of another national electoral campaign.

And for another, since the Duterte siblings haven’t yet proven they’ve inherited their father’s phenomenal and widely successful “personalistic” political persona.

One can’t readily say, for instance, if either of the two younger male Dutertes can further their father’s cultivated myth that their political clan is supposedly the only one strong enough and decisive enough to save the nation.

A myth which the elder Duterte himself made abundantly clear throughout his presidency, impressing upon all that he alone and his personal ideas of justice could provide security for all.

We know better now.

Nor, for that matter, have the two managed to appropriate the elder Duterte’s ridiculous political symbolism of being above the law.

If this were so, there wouldn’t be rumors that Davao Mayor Baste Duterte faces suspension from office, similar to what happened to other pro-Duterte local politicians in recent months.

Still, a political brand has potent advantages in our elite democracy’s addiction to dynastic politics.

A political brand name, in fact, comes handy in the joke that is our current Senate. In our surreal Senate now we have siblings galore, even a mother and her son, strutting around its hallowed halls. Would a “Duter3” make any difference?

Nonetheless, all this can be dismissed as “politics as usual” in this sad republic of ours, where politics spins around the unreformed system of a powerful presidency, weak and malleable political institutions, and puny political parties inhabited by habitual political opportunists.

Really, all this isn’t surprising in our corrupted political landscape that’s somehow locked in an alternate dimension where even the belated discovery that a foreign national is a Tarlac town mayor isn’t a strange thing.