VP Sara‘s political lynching

It looks like the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte is doomed.

Two characters, advertised by the prosecution as vital witnesses who would give evidence to convict VP Sara, were pulled out, making their earlier narratives nothing but gossip. Indeed, a recidivist kidnapper could hardly be relied on.

Ramil Madriaga was pulled out by the House Committee on Justice from the row of alleged criminals facing trial. He claimed to be a bagman of the VP. On the eve of his appearance at the impeachment trial, however, the prosecution decided not to present him. Obviously, from the mini-trial which the Committee on Justice held, the prosecution knew Madriaga would only jeopardize their case.

Then there was the putschist, former Senator Antonio Trillanes, a certified anti-Duterte barker, the prosecution bannered as their ultimate “tell-all” and “show-all” witness to end the political career of VP Sara. He even boasted he would take down all the Dutertes in his exposé at the trial. But a day before he was to appear as the “star witness,” he suddenly got cold feet and begged to be excused. The hopes of the prosecution suddenly fizzled out.

The next day, Trillanes called a press conference where he perorated against former President Rodrigo Duterte and VP Sara. Without defense lawyer Sheila Sison interrogating him — a situation he apparently wanted to avoid like the plague — Trillanes free-wheelingly dished out rehashed charges.

This time he alleged that more than P319 million from Chinese government and corporate sources went into Calle88 Foods Corp., which he linked to the Vice President’s husband, lawyer Manases Carpio.

And that is where we are today. The Palace and its cabal in Congress are now changing strategies — from the impeachment court to the streets — to derail VP Sara’s run for president in 2028.

This time it is the turn of Defense Secretary Gibo Teodoro with his own lapdogs doing the bidding of Malacañang. The orchestration of the black propaganda against VP Sara has become obviously apparent. Sec. Gibo Teodoro’s knee-jerk reaction was not expected, but neither did it come as a surprise. It added a condiment to his and Malacañang’s “hate China” policy, and this time they salivated on it following Trillanes’ exposé.

Gibo demanded a thorough investigation, making it appear that the firm Trillanes described was a shell company. Google defines a shell company as “a legal entity that often hides a business’s ultimate beneficial owner from investigators, possibly because of money laundering activities.”

But there is a discordant note that easily throws Trillanes’s “disclosure” out of tune. Calle88 Foods Corp. has been in the business of processing and exporting banana chips for years. In Tagum City, where the firm is based, everybody who’s somebody and some hoi polloi know of the firm.

Mans Carpio owns the majority shares, and one cannot blame him for having good business sense over, say, Trillanes, whose source of income is his pension after his retirement from the Navy. Trillanes’s political career is doomed — he was even snubbed by his constituents in Caloocan when he ran for mayor.

For the education of Secretary Teodoro and Trillanes, Tagum City is home to about 15,000 hectares planted to Cavendish bananas that are exported fresh and generate millions of dollars for the country. The banana exporters are extra careful with quality standards.

In the early days of the banana industry, oversized and undersized bananas were thrown away. But not long after, local entrepreneurs — like Calle88 Foods Corp. — processed these into dehydrated and fried banana chips for international export.

For the information of Malacañang and other government functionaries, China absorbs the huge volume of fresh Cavendish bananas, banana chips, durian, fresh and processed tuna, and exotic marine fishes all coming from the Davao Region.

With the government running out of money and mighty dollars, keep your toxic politics away from these honest and legitimate businesses.

In the first place, there is no way you can stop another Duterte from becoming the next president. That’s not my prediction. The legitimate survey companies have shown us the graphs.