As the impending snafu gathers steam, Vice President Sara Duterte finds herself on the receiving end. Wasting no time, former President Rodrigo Duterte promptly constitutes himself into a formidable wrecking crew on the un-mistaken belief that he still enjoys clout in the whole of society — not the least the "praetorian elites" in the military, police and uniformed services.
Just when anyone in his right mind should have considered the current President's imprimatur, when he said: "I don't want Duterte impeached," the rumor mill is blazing with noise following the filing of a House resolution to initiate impeachment proceedings against VP Sara, concurrently secretary of the Department of Education.
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has taken cognizance of House Bill 1477 urging the government to cooperate with the International Criminal Court, something that if given due course will subject DU30 to a degree of culpability.
There are oppositors to the move to impeach VP Sara as there are to allowing the ICC drug war probe against former president DU30. But Confucius says, viz.: "He who catches two rabbits, catches neither." Whatever shall be the final shape of these developments, it puts both the daughter and the father on guard, on the defensive, on a perfidious endgame.
In a quick effort to probably navigate a more balanced view, it can be argued that we have state institutions firmly in place that are best not seriously violated or transgressed. Why can't we regard elected public officials as having a mandate from heaven?
This simply means as Confucius's famous disciple Mengzi used to say, viz.: "Heaven sees through the people's seeing, Heaven hears through the people's hearing." In other words, the people, in this case the electorate, are the "masters of the deities."
If either Sara or DU30 is held to account, or both, these two power-holders in our body polity still have the Filipino people rallying behind them. Be warned that the people cannot be excluded from the political equation. To do so is likened to what a famous prime minister in Athens, Zichan, described as "obstructing the river; when it overwhelms the dam, more people will be hurt."
A few thoughts could be very disturbing.
First, we are so used to a wicked pattern of realpolitik that we can ascribe as "riding in tandem" as in the cases of FM Sr. and the First Lady, GMA and the First Gentleman, DU30 and the Vice President, and quite ominously, FM Jr. and the First Lady.
With an ex-president and incumbent vice president under vitriolic attack, "de-popularizing" them might be an emerging catchphrase. If push turns to shove, will the injury inflicted on either father or daughter, or both, improve the popularity ratings on his own scorecard of another power holder in Congress with unabashed pretensions to benefit from an imaginary "line of succession?"
It isn't easy to think that for want of confidential funds, the vice-presidential throne would be lost. And for state institutions' lack of trying while the President still sits on his throne, the former power holder belatedly would be brought to court?
It appears from the outline that all this string of histrionics creating unimaginable havoc are of the kind of a "mere afterthought." Hurting Sara and DU30 — separately or in tandem — inflicts injury upon the people who placed them in power.
The question that begs an answer is whether the people have now begun to disapprove of the father as well as of the daughter? Has anyone of the two exhibited a vicious lust for power? Impeaching Sara and subjecting DU30 to an ICC probe are at best an exercise in futility.
The resulting fight would be reduced to between formidable power holders: the current President against his predecessor, the Vice President against the House Speaker. Only the status quo can preserve the balance of power at this point. A stalemate is what this zarzuela is.