What’s next, a naked emperor?

The legislature indisputably went on overdrive when it summoned a sitting Vice President to explain the confidential funds in her agency’s budget, even for prior years under the guise of a “continuing appropriation.” In particular, the House of Representatives overstepped the bounds of tradition and propriety in the manner that its members “ganged up” on VP Sara Duterte at the drop of a hat.

In the next turn, the Senate summoned the former president to explain what laws or human rights violations actually resulted from his explicit and implicit “war on drugs” that he, in no uncertain terms, would stand up for to his last breath. He regarded as providential his opportunity to talk to the viewing public about what the long and short of the anti-drug war was all about.

Both the incumbent VP and the ex-president are Dutertes, daughter Sara and father Rodrigo who breezed through all these legislative proceedings that were designed to demonize, de-popularizez and demystify the myth that once was considered the lasting legacy of the anti-drug and larger criminal landscape.

It acquired a parallelism with the Sino-Philippine issue over the contested West Philippine Sea on two fronts: jurisdiction and sovereignty. The Senate and the House professed to have acquired jurisdiction on account of their “oversight function” and “power of the purse” and they played “sovereign” over agencies even above them in the bureaucratic hierarchy.

Again, both the House and Senate playing “bullies in the schoolyard” have not been more intimidating, aggressive, unparliamentary in deliberating issues that had long lost their relevance in moral, legal and constitutional fronts. As the timely saying goes, “One who chases two rabbits catches neither,” or put another way, “Before embarking upon a journey of revenge, dig two graves” (Confucius).

Since the pertinent committee report has not yet been released by Congress in Sara’s case, any contemplation of impeachment may have lost its meaning or doing so might look like putting the cart before the horse. It would be too late in the day, if not politically worthless, to glorify the condemnation of Sara without the rabid political oppositionists’ future falling down the rabbit hole.

The same holds true if the government or the anti-Dutertes in either chamber so much as launch another vitriolic attack, character assassination, black propaganda or trumped-up charges against either Sara or DU30 in a vain attempt to boost public acceptance of administration candidates in the coming May 2025 midterm elections. At the Senate showdown, the public simply knew that DU30 had effectively turned the tables around, leaving any imperative from the International Criminal Court a thin veil of hope.

All told, so much has gone under the bridge that any average individual can see where the needle is pointing, namely: an emerging political culture given to excess by the “powers that be” against those who do not toe the line. Unfortunately, Sara and DU30 in both their individual and mutual capacities practice what they preach no matter the cost, no matter the consequences, “though the heavens fall.”

Not a few quarters must have been disillusioned over how the Senate inquiry turned out, viz., they “thought to put the ex-president in the hot seat, for heads to roll in this purported crimes against humanity, to strike the fuse that would incentivize the International Criminal Court to forthwith take cognizance, or the last nail to seal the coffin for the Dutertes’ final demise.”

In truth, DU30’s message will be long remembered as when he said, “My mandate as president of the republic was to protect the country and the Filipino people. Do not question my policies, because I offer no apologies, no excuses. I did what I had to do, and whether you believe it or not, I did it for my country.”

On the level of probability, it will be 51/49 in DU30s favor and no matter how they spin the penny, tails will face up 80 percent of the time to his lucky credit.