Who is Marcoleta really serving?

A Senate committee supposed to trace where flood-control money went has been distracted by signatures and witness-protection fights. A surprise witness, a former Marine, delivered a dramatic claim and credibility that has since been questioned.

Marcoleta championed that entrance. Spent hearings litigating the form of truth rather than the content. Facts are under assault. And Marcoleta weaponizes every procedural quibble, loophole, and every moment of confusion.

The senator, it must be remembered, is not some aloof neutral. The probe should reveal how taxpayer money drowned in corruption. It morphed into a smokescreen for revenge.

Strip the legalese and you’re left with a very simple formula: monopolize Congress and media attention, force focus onto minutiae. Because if the headlines are about pork, corruption, committee drama, then the headlines are not about Sara Duterte’s stillborn impeachment case, the ICC, or her confidential funds.

The goal: chaos. Chaos protects allies. The time Marcoleta buys is gold. Because the Duterte bloc’s survival is pinned to one number: 2028, when exhaustion sets in, amid an impeachment that has fizzled, Sara waltzes into Malacañang as the inevitable choice.

Lawmakers who challenge her are bogged down defending themselves or parsing Marcoleta’s tangents instead of mounting a full-bore assault to render Sara politically radioactive.

Until earlier this month, Marcoleta chaired the very committee now being weaponized against the flood-control mafia. He could dictate timing, topics, witnesses. He could turn the committee into loud hearings, but no fatal blows to Sara.

It was more political than administrative: the leadership shakeup that moved a Duterte-aligned senator off a powerful investigative perch and put a Marcos-aligned veteran in his place.

And now Marcoleta peacocks against Lacson, overacting and positioning, because he, not Lacson, should be holding the gavel.

To the Senate and the defectors, he’s saying, don’t sideline me. To Sara’s bloc: “I’m still your most loyal hitman.”

The tell: Marcoleta has been here before. He had moved to dismiss an impeachment complaint against VP Sara Duterte, citing procedural violations: wrong dates, lack of proper House rules followed, SC rulings.

He had been laying down legal arguments in advance that can kill future new impeachment efforts before gather velocity. He’s doing it now after the SC had declared the previous Sara impeachment bid unconstitutional.

The Discayas. Their story stutters. They claim to have been moving money, cutting corners, leaving trails since 2016, but the record skips: gaping omissions in Rodrigo’s timeline before 2022, a vacuum where inconvenient truths can hide.

Fear is the unspoken force here. Fear that the Discayas, left unchecked, might spill something that detonates the alliances Marcoleta is safeguarding.

Two years. That’s the window. Survival is possible. Accountability is not.