Toxic politics is all but guaranteed as President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration enters its twilight years.
Senator Imee Marcos argues that the arrest drama surrounding Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa was never really about Bato but an opening move in a far larger, higher-stakes political game.
She contended that the attempt to serve the International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant on Dela Rosa was a pretext for the real target, which was the Senate leadership itself.
With the impeachment trial looming, wresting control of the Senate is crucial to ensure the removal of Vice President Sara Duterte, which is step 1 of a grand self-perpetuation plan.
The most explosive claim Senator Marcos made is charter change through a Constituent Assembly (Con-Ass), which she said is already being actively planned and is allegedly already in the kitchen being “cooked.”
She painted a picture of a presidency allegedly moving toward authoritarian consolidation using government instruments and resources to neutralize political rivals, silence corruption investigations and ultimately eliminate elections to stay in power indefinitely.
When a Marcos accuses a Marcos, in the process naming her brother, nephew, and cousin in flood-control anomalies, and openly warning against self-perpetuation, it suggests the President’s trajectory is already irreversible.
Bringing the flood control scandal back into the limelight through Senate hearings will raise public outrage over infrastructure corruption at a time of chronic flooding expected with the approaching typhoon season.
The Marcos administration enters its final stretch facing a convergence of self-reinforcing crises, including a fractured family coalition, an active ICC process, mounting evidence of flood-control corruption, a poisonous cha-cha, and a polarizing impeachment trial.
Senator Marcos’ revelations, taken as a whole, indicated that what is at stake is no longer just policy or personalities but the survival of electoral democracy.
History has an uncanny way of repeating itself, from the positive projections at the start of Marcos’ term to allegations of massive corruption further down the road.
Senator Marcos acknowledged the irony of her position, that she, as the daughter of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., is the one sounding the alarm about her brother’s self-perpetuation agenda.
She said that if anyone understands the consequences of a leader extending his grip on power and the public fury it generates, it is her.
Senator Marcos’ message to her brother: do not repeat history.
If the ConAs plan is real, then the entire impeachment trial may be rendered moot by design since the vice presidency is removed in a parliamentary government.
With the evolving plan, the Senate becomes a focal point, as Senate hearings will produce televised confrontations expected to amplify public anger over flooding, a viscerally felt daily reality for millions of Filipinos.
Whistleblowers and insiders, emboldened by Senator Marcos’ own willingness to go on record, may begin coming forward in greater numbers, pinning the real masterminds in the wholesale corruption that pilfered P1 trillion in public funds from the start of President Marcos’ term.
The only certainty is that the final two years of the Marcos administration would be defined not by governance achievements, but by a desperate and destabilizing struggle for survival.
