Telenovela sa Kamara flops

The House Committee on Justice failed spectacularly in making its star witness, Ramil Madriaga, believable.

Instead, it staged a three-ring circus that turned the entire proceeding into a shameful comedy.

The credibility of Madriaga, another character in the array of pawns in the stable of coup plotter Antonio Trillanes IV, vaporized during the so-called “clarificatory” hearing on the effort to unseat Vice President Sara Duterte.

The committee, in its frantic effort to prop him up, only succeeded in making the whole spectacle look exactly what it was — cheap political theater.

Madriaga’s motive was already on record. In a Messenger chat with Lt. Col. Dennis Nolasco, he openly plotted to become a state witness precisely to escape jail.

His bright idea? Let Nolasco claim the confidential funds were handed to him, while Madriaga, safely immunized as a witness, would then “explain” where the money went. That single message is the smoking gun.

It was Madriaga himself admitting, in writing, that his testimony was a get-out-of-jail-free card. If he wasn’t coerced or incentivized, the committee kept asking, what could be his motive? The answer was staring them in the face the entire time.

Then came the visual aids, the grand reveal of photos and videos supposedly proving Madriaga’s intimate connection to VP Duterte.

The committee must have thought these would be their knockout punch. It was, in fact, a disaster of epic proportions.

Every single image produced for the hearing came from public campaign events or pandemic-era Zoom calls with volunteers and supporters.

The now infamous “Happy Birthday, Sir Ram” greeting was the kind that VP Duterte gave to supporters by the dozen as she read names from a card, since she had never met the recipient.

VP Duterte’s own office staff is ready to testify under oath that these greetings were mass produced for strangers.

The committee’s “star witness” merely proved Madriaga was never an insider. He was just another face in the crowd.

The most humorous moment, however, was the breathless drama over Madriaga’s supposed P125-billion cash deliveries, supposedly completed in a single 24-hour salvo following only verbal instructions and using prepaid phones.

No proof or witnesses were provided, except for the man who just confessed to his jailbreak scheme. The committee treated this fairy tale as unassailable.

Madriga’s comedy only strengthened the futility of a VP Duterte appearance to confront her accuser. Plainly, she didn’t need to, as Madriaga had already demolished himself.

Even if she had shown up, the committee’s own restrictive rules on questioning would have turned any confrontation into a scripted monologue. There was no point giving the farce a bigger stage.

The pièce de résistance was the much-hyped bank waiver, with Madriaga making a spectacle of signing one, as if that single act would magically validate his every wild claim.

The committee, on cue, acted as if this were a checkmate. A waiver only confirmed that the accounts existed in his name.

It does not prove a single peso came from former President Rodrigo Duterte or Vice President Sara, as Madriaga claimed.

VP Duterte’s counsel in her perjury case, Salvador Paolo Panelo Jr., compared Madriaga to actual whistleblowers in past scandals, such as the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) officials who presented documents, authority, and direct access, making their claims believable.

Madriaga, in contrast, had selfies from campaign rallies and a birthday video as his “proof.”

The first clarificatory hearing was not about truth but about the presentation of a poorly crafted performance with a shabby script featuring a witness whose own words had already convicted him of shopping for immunity.

The House panel clarified nothing; it merely confirmed what Filipinos already suspected, that the proceedings were a taxpayer-funded telenovela that ultimately flopped.

The only thing the committee managed to make believable was its own desperation.

The curtain has fallen on the theatrics, with the political farce culminating in a star witness who effectively buried himself on live television.