Sara‘s tantrum

Alas, we Filipinos have perfected the art of turning the trivial into the tragic. A delayed document becomes an affront. A routine process becomes a slight. A travel authority for a government official, issued on time but not on cue, becomes cause for public lamentation.

And so Vice President Sara Duterte wrote a letter.

“Thank you for the last-minute issuance…” she said, in that tone Filipinos know too well — the tone that smiles while it sharpens the knife. It was not quite anger, not quite sarcasm, but something in between: wounded pride or a feeling of entitlement.

We have seen this before. Not in Malacañang necessarily, but in the small theaters of everyday life — the barangay office, the corporate lobby, the airport lounge. The person who believes the line should move faster because he is there. The assumption that process must yield to presence.

How about that B-movie action star-cum-governor who had a habit of having his bodyguards sweep aside all other motorists on the expressway until, one balmy day, he ran into one of the President’s sons and received his just comeuppance?

This time it’s not a clerk being chided, but the Office of the President. The Palace, in turn, replied with the dull thud of facts, courtesy of the feisty Claire Castro. The Vice President applied for a travel authority on 14 April, the Palace mouthpiece said.

Castro went on and on: Duterte received the document a day before her departure. That is the practice. No more, no less. No denial, no delay — unless one considers not being prioritized a delay, the President’s spokesperson said in so many words.

And there lies the heart of it.

Power does not merely command; it expects. Over time, expectation hardens into entitlement. What is given as a procedure begins to feel like a concession. What is standard begins to feel insufficient. One forgets that the system was not designed to revolve around a single name, no matter how prominent.

There is also the matter of timing, that stubborn thing that refuses to cooperate with narratives. The Vice President’s complaint comes not in a vacuum, but in the middle of her impeachment hearings, which she has snubbed.

How about the accusations, the numbers that do not seem to add up, billions that demand explanation, not distraction. And yet the loudest note, for a moment, was about a trip. It would be comical if it were not instructive.

For in that small episode — a letter, a line, a canceled itinerary — we glimpse something larger about the state of our politics. Not the grand battles, not the ideological divides, but the quiet assumptions that animate those who hold power: that they deserve more, that they should get it sooner, that any deviation is cause for grievance.

In the end, no right was violated. No liberty curtailed. The Vice President was free to go. What was interrupted was not a journey, but an expectation. And expectations, like all things in politics, are best kept in check. Especially when the country is watching, and 2028 is just around the corner.