Marcos Inc. versus Duterte Inc.

With the optics set at “full steam ahead,” today’s theater of competing politico-ideological camps and personages is feeding on awareness of what the people hear, read and see on quad media platforms. What used to be characterized as basically “tribal politics” has galvanized into “rival politics” between two dynastic families in serious rivalry.

The retaliatory acts of an offended government were at their worst when it put on the hot seat first former president Rodrigo Duterte and then Vice President Sara Duterte. The 19th Congress — both the House and Senate — separately summoned Digong and Sara as if they were suspects in a crime the commission of which was merely anecdotal, bereft of hard evidence.

The chips don’t fall into place in a gambit that might betray an overzealous whim disguised as pretentiously “focused” public service. Someone with the same pedigree is just as intent on becoming the “self-anointed successor” of FM Jr. whose approval and trust ratings went down the rabbit hole. As “two peas in a pod,” both gentlemen constitute a curse.

Per Pulse Asia, FM Jr.’s ratings suffered a double-digit drop. In the next survey, God knows his ratings will scrape rock bottom against the backdrop of DU30’s fate in The Hague, courtesy of a head of state whose “indifference” spells bane rather than boon.

As public opinion polls indicate, the lady is rising whereas the gentleman is falling; the political fulcrum dependent on how much approval and trust the people place on the arch rivals.

What the government did to DU30 isn’t without consequences. It can be construed in a host of ways from both sides of the aisle. Gauging by the spontaneous protest rallies in nearly all capitals of the world, every self-respecting Filipino out there empathized with the former president over what FM Jr. did to him. If it were not an unpatriotic disavowal of the gravest order, what is?

Betrayal is no strange creature, come to think of it. Senator Imee Marcos appears poised to widen the cracks in the whole bureaucracy created by no less than her brother-President himself. The future costs of FM Jr.’s “obscene” decision may yet take their toll and the latest Pulse Asia survey is screaming proof of this. There’s no way any subsequent survey will reverse the trend.

No amount of legalese justifies the folly that government chose — a la Jason Statham in The Transporter — in moving DU30 for timely delivery straight to The Hague. He is now in the custody of the International Criminal Court for alleged “crimes against humanity of murder,” albeit later or future professed evidence is sure-fire certain to have no legal legs to stand on.

What incontrovertible proof exists that the former president committed crimes against humanity by his own hand over the linear time continuum, i.e., “between 1 November 2011 and 16 March 2019?” To think of these markers alone rings no bell in terms of whether anything was peculiar about them, as there was none. Even worse, the six-year gap it took the ICC to resurrect such crimes against humanity appears to be simply anecdotal, the country’s effective withdrawal from the ICC notwithstanding.

The interval between 14 March 2025 that marked DU30’s initial appearance before the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber and the scheduled confirmation of charges hearing on 23 September only mirrors the utter lack of urgency and compulsion on the part of the ICC that issued the warrant of arrest only on 7 March 2025.

The sudden, quick, orchestrated arrest and the government’s surrender of DU30 to the ICC was a monumental error — a grand faux pas — any government in its right mind must not ever commit. The a la “gold rush” attendant to the signing of an impeachment complaint against Sara with “ayuda” as the trade-off stinks of systematic looting from state coffers — a bad currency to win favor.