Sara Duterte is steak. Not majority steak. Not five-star, Michelin, candle-lit, violin steak. She’s a vengeful steak. Sizzling. Beef angry at the pan. The waiter asked: “Mr. Velasco, for your main, fish or beef?” I said beef! Salmon is very polite. Very soft-spoken. No charisma. Steak doesn’t apologize to the lemon and fires the waiter.

Three people scream steak and suddenly it’s a “landslide.” That’s our elections. Plurality. Sounds intellectual. Means you don’t have to win the country. You need to have the biggest bite.

Eight people voting for dinner. Three want steak. Two like sushi. Pasta. Salad. One insists on liver smoothie challenging the conversation. Steak wins. Everybody gets steak. Even the vegetarian. Sorry, you live in steak country now.

That’s how you cook a very loud steak. That’s how you have 35 percent walking around like they’re 85 percent, chest out, “the people have spoken.”

Yes. Some people. The rowdy ones. The DDS. The minority. But the most organized ones.

Thirty-five percent can feel like destiny right before impact. “The inevitable Sara Duterte.” Disasters also feel inevitable right before they happen. That’s not a compliment.

Passionate minorities always beat the exhausted majorities. The ones at home who don’t vote because, “it’s just two horses anyway.” The ones resigned to whoever wins by not voting.

A country should never feel like voting changes nothing. The right to vote is the right to protect oneself, too.

Here’s a genius idea. Think about it. Very simple. Negative votes. In your ballot, you have two votes. One vote for. One vote against. That’s it. Final score? Positive votes minus negative votes. Highest number wins.

Easy. What’s complicated is calling 35 percent “Ina ng Bayan.”

People will say, “Oh no, political weapon!” DDS: “Vote for Sara, punish Risa.” Intense! Except everybody else can subtract, too. Even the resigned ones. Very empowering. Because if half the country are already bracing for impact before you even win, boom! Maybe you shouldn’t run the country.

We already talk like this in real life. “I like her, but over my dead body, not him.” The ballot only lets you whisper the first part. Strange for a democracy literally born from “No.” No to dictators. No to unchecked power. No to Martial Law.

I’m saying let the country say the second part, too. If rejection is real, fear, discomfort, doubt, count those votes, too.

Consent is the absence of overwhelming refusal in a divided room. Power without true consent is occupancy. This nation was never meant to be occupied. Not again.