Fresh breath for democracy

Fresh breath for democracy | Daily Tribune

They are all ganging up on her. But knowing Vice President Inday Sara Duterte, she can take them all either individually or severally.

The traditional political opposition that we knew in the past is gone. Even the communist party-list representatives have been conscripted into a grand alliance called “Bagong Pilipinas” led by cousins Ferdinand R. Marcos, the President, and Martin Romualdez, the Speaker of the House which holds the purse. The Senate President, Chiz Escudero, it turns out, is a docile acolyte of the head of the kitchen Cabinet.

It looked like an impossibility and was unimaginable to watch and listen to Makabayan representatives leading and taking the role of attack dogs against VP Sara in the houses of Congress.

But it happened and is happening still. The House leadership, I must concede, brilliantly manipulated the leftists by giving them a stage to attack VP Sara and citizen Rodrigo R. Duterte.

Rep. France Castro and the company will never forgive the father and daughter for the defeat of the CPP/NPA/NDF and the crumbling of their mass base. They detested FPRRD for creating the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and VP Sara for pursuing its objectives as co-vice chairman. The Makabayan bloc needs the Ang Bagong Pilipinas cabal in order to survive.

They were compensated for their efforts to vilify VP Sara and diminish the popularity of FPRRD.

Malacañang issued an amnesty for NPA combatants after the Armed Forces of the Philippines routed them in all of the regions of the country that were later declared insurgent free.

As if that were not enough, President Marcos revived the peace talks, sending Carlito Galvez to a negotiation aptly described by VP Sara as “a deal with the devil.”

Outside the congressional corral, putschist Antonio Trillanes surfaced and, as is his style, filed cases against PRRD, Senators Bato dela Rosa and Bong Go, VP Sara’s husband Mans Carpio and Rep. Pulong Duterte, among others.

If you run through all the cases he filed in court, they are a compendium of past complaints.

Trillanes’ complaints were rehashed from the story of Peter Joemel Advincula, alias Bikoy, who confessed to being contracted to implicate the family of FPRRD in a series of videotaped recordings titled “Ang Totoong Narco-list.”

It’s a long story but those who wish to dig deeper into how the adventurism of “Bikoy” and Trillanes came entangled, just google “Bikoy/Ang Totoong Narco-list.”

Of course, there is Leila de Lima. Freed from jail, her first statement to the press was that she was going to help the International Criminal Court in its investigation of alleged extrajudicial killings (EJK) carried out by the Davao Death Squad (DDS) which she insinuated was the creation of FPRRD.

Like Trillanes, Leila’s witnesses were found guilty of perjury. To top it all, despite her allegations that hundreds of DDS-EJK victims were buried in an abandoned quarry in Davao, she has yet to produce a single piece of evidence. Nearly two decades have elapsed spanning the time she started her probe in 2009 when she was the Senate Committee on Human Rights chairperson to today.

All we get from her is a series of fairy tales.

Well, the midterm election is just around the corner and getting free TV coverage and space in publications and social media is not a bad idea. But winning is another story.

Like all the retinues of attack dogs in Congress and their black propagandists, the popularity of VP Sara and citizen Duterte has not waned. While a recent SWS survey showed the Vice President’s ratings had declined, those of PBBM and Speaker Romualdez took a nosedive too.

The black propagandists though are selective about whose ratings to present. My barber has a way of describing it: “Kanya kanyang hanap buhay lang, sir.” (To each his means of livelihood.)

As I write this piece, Vice President Sara is at the receiving end of diatribes from the House of Romualdez and the Senate.

Threats of impeachment have been going around, including the childish dare that henceforth the budget expenditures of the Office of the Vice President would be subjected to scrutiny.

But none of this will deter the eagle from the south who now flies freely and is ready to swoop on her prey.

It is comforting that amid the uncertainties we are facing we now hear a loud and brave admonition:

“Leaders should not be motivated by cash, cocaine or champagne. And, most certainly, leaders should not be made to hold champagne glasses. Again, we Filipinos deserve better.”

Vice President Sara Duterte just gave Democracy in the Philippines a fresh breath of life.