Claire Castro’s many faces

It takes a special kind of lawyer to divide a nation without breaking a sweat, and Atty. Claire Castro has managed just that. She has emerged from the calm of her TV legal show and plunged into the maelstrom of social media, where every word she utters fuels either derision or devotion.

Called “Ante Kler” by some, Castro’s words travel faster than policy. Her daily briefings at the Palace by the Pasig River, Malacañang, the seat of power now lorded over by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., have become must-watch theater.

One moment she’s invoking sovereignty with nationalist fervor; the next, she’s calling her critics “garapata,” or parasites. (“What I call them, those who have nothing to do but to destroy, are parasites,” she said, originally in Filipino.) That one line alone made her trend for two days, not bad for someone in office barely a few months.

Castro’s admirers call her “fearless,” a woman unafraid to talk tough where men hesitate. Her detractors say she’s “reckless,” confusing combativeness with candor.

Both may be right. The internet has turned her into a Rorschach blot of national frustration, a mirror reflecting how divided the public is about everything, including how government should sound.

To her credit, Castro has a knack for turning even the driest policy briefing into a performance.

When she defended the government’s stand on the International Criminal Court, she declared: “The President has committed no betrayal against anyone because he is merely following our own laws.” It was lawyerly, defiant, and unmistakably hers, half constitutional lecture, half courtroom drama.

But sometimes her instincts for spectacle overwhelm the message. Asked about Senator Alan Peter Cayetano’s grand proposal for all government officials to resign and call for snap elections, she quipped: “Oh then you start, do it now. Go first so you become a model, show that you really sacrifice.”

Sharp, quick and funny, but perhaps too personal for the Palace podium.

Then came the Chavit Singson episode, where she warned that the former Ilocos Sur governor’s call for students to protest could amount to “inciting to sedition.”

She argued that he had “enticed the youth, especially high school and college students and many of them likely minors, not to attend school.”

It was a lawyer’s precision mixed with political alarm bells, though to many, it sounded like the state taking itself a bit too seriously. Yet Castro’s most revealing moment came when she said, “I know we are not saints, none of us are saints.”

Delivered with a smile, it was as much confession as defense, the unguarded admission of someone aware that public service is not an exercise in sanctity, only survival.

The trouble is Atty. Claire Castro is not just any talking head. She is the President’s official spokesperson, the nation’s microphone. When she speaks, the Palace is speaking. And when she quarrels, the whole government appears to quarrel alongside her.

That’s the paradox of being Claire Castro: her spontaneity is both her charm and her liability.

She thrives on live interviews, unfiltered and unscripted, her hands moving almost as fast as her words. But the role she has demands not passion but precision, not rhetoric but restraint.

To many Filipinos weary of jargon, she’s refreshing, a voice that is human in a world of robotic press releases. To others, she’s a reminder that words, especially when spoken from the Palace, can wound as much as they can inspire.

In a way, Castro has become a stand-in for the national mood: quick to defend, slow to listen, easily provoked, yet always certain of good intentions. Perhaps that is why she comes across so strongly; she is, for better or worse, the voice of how Filipinos argue today.

But there is one truth she must remember: the presidential podium is not a pulpit for personal opinion. It is a channel for clarity, not emotion; a platform for policy, not personality.

Atty. Claire Castro has the voice, wit, and will to command a room. What she needs now is the self-restraint to remember who she’s speaking for and who she’s speaking to.