Inday Sara practiced free speech on Friday and assured the nation and the overlords at Malacañang that she is not planning to overthrow the Marcos government anytime soon.

Most politicians content themselves with denying corruption charges, tax irregularities, extramarital adventures, or ownership of mysterious properties acquired through what they invariably describe as “sound financial management.”

But Vice President Duterte, speaking in Davao City on Independence Day, found herself denying something far grander. Not the impeachment charges. For that, there are her lawyers.

“Wala sa aking mga kamay ang pagsasagawa ng (I don’t have in my hands the) extra constitutional means to overthrow the current administration. At hindi ko din gusto ‘yun. Hindi ko gusto agawin yun posisyon ni (And I don’t want that. I don’t want to grab the position of) Bongbong Marcos.”

Fair enough.

Yet there is something delightfully paradoxical about spending the past few years attacking a President, questioning his leadership, accusing his administration of wrongdoing, describing him as shameless, and then pausing to clarify that she has absolutely no desire to occupy his throne.

It is a bit like standing hungry and penniless outside a restaurant every evening, warning people the food is terrible, the owner is dishonest, and the chef cannot cook, and then adding that you wouldn’t enter the establishment if you had the chance.

That’s irony in its most basic form, leaving us wondering why, despite her claimed willingness to wait until 2028, she sounded ready for a hostile takeover.

Is she fuming about a looming conviction, with the Gatchalian bloc consolidating its hold on the Senate leadership and thus control of her trial? Despairing even before the battle begins?

The most revealing line, however, came later: “Gusto ko makita ng taong bayan hanggang sa dulo kung gaano ka walang-hiya si BBM (I want the people to see to the end BBM’s shamelessness).” The phrase “hanggang sa dulo” is doing a tremendous amount of lifting there. There is no forever where there is an end.

Not next week. Not next month. Not after the next Senate hearing. The end. The final act. The closing credits. It suggests a political drama whose principal actors have no intention of leaving the stage.

Which brings to mind, although it is already June, Nick Joaquin’s May Day Eve — that haunting tale of obsession, vivid recollections and mirrors. And of the devil himself manifesting, or the witch a-brewing, depending on who is talking.

Badoy, is that you? Agueda?

Long after the romance (political in the case of Bongbong and Sara) has soured and the years have taken their toll, the protagonists remain trapped by visions of one another, unable to fully escape the spell cast when they campaigned together in 2022 under the badly misnamed UniTeam.

Bongbong and Sara increasingly resemble former lovers who insist they have moved on but still talk about each other every single day. The alliance is dead; long live the alliance. The friendship is over; please stand by for another episode.

Both camps declare they are focused on serving the Filipino people. Yet every political development seems to circle back to the same quarrel over power, over clan survival, over sending Rodrigo Duterte to The Hague.

Perhaps Sara Duterte is sincere when she says she does not want Bongbong Marcos’ job. Perhaps she is — or maybe not just yet. We are reminded, though, that politics has a way of turning declarations into riddles.

The louder someone insists she does not want something, the more curious people become about why the subject keeps returning to the conversation.

In Joaquin’s enchanted mirror, people saw what their hearts were unwilling to admit.

In Philippine politics, the mirror reflects ambition, grievance, resentment, and unfinished business, all wrapped in the language of principle, or the lack of it.