For a number of months now, Vice President Sara Z. Duterte has been the object of a vilification campaign in the halls of Congress and by a throng of paid hacks that have become more vicious as the midterm elections approach.
Her father, former President Rodrigo R. Duterte, had expressed his concern over her entry into the future presidential derby, apprehensive that she would be subjected to harsh and unkind tirades from her adversaries and their attack dogs.
However, the VP, known to be the alpha in the Duterte family, has emerged battle-scarred but stronger and more confident, maintaining her dignity and remaining unfazed with her pleasant mien.
The House of Representatives, for one, has been holding endless committee hearings in a vain attempt to pin her on contrived issues of questionable disbursements, dragging her apolitical husband and brother into decades-old drug issues.
Her budget proposal for the Office of the Vice President was slashed by more than half in a childish plot to curtail her outreach to the people.
These did not deter her nor impede her momentum. She sought comfort in the people who were victims of a series of calamities to whom she brought relief goods donated by her friends and sympathizers who remained anonymous.
It’s awe-inspiring to see the womenfolk of tribesmen embracing her like a long lost daughter. She dances with them and even had a tattoo etched on her leg while her malefactors plot to “skin her alive, burn her and throw her ashes to the wind.” She will be unbowed.
She has weathered the magma of derogatory issues. Recently the Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability, which had doggedly worked to discredit her on the P125-million CIF disbursements, was stunned to shame when the Commission on Audit declared during the committee hearing that the OVP had fully liquidated its expenditures.
That’s a stinging slap on the face of the congressmen who could only produce certificates of expenses and could not hide their profligacy, flaunting their jewelry and accessories in public.
The coordinated denigration campaign waged by strange political bedfellows among the House leadership and the conscripted acolytes from the left-leaning partylist representatives against the Vice President Sara did not sit well with the people.
In the recent survey done by Pulse Asia, the VP had shed off a few percentage points. However, all the top political personalities suffered the same.
In the final score, VP Sara Duterte still stood out with the highest trust rating at 61 percent and performance rating at 60 percent.
Senate President Chiz Escudero was the second most trusted official hitting 56 percent, followed by President Bongbong Marcos with 50 percent in third place.
Speaker Martin Romualdez, from whose House the barrage of attacks on the VP emanates, is in the butt end with 31 percent. This was an eloquent message from the survey respondents that represent the more than 32-million Filipinos who elected and fully trust their Inday Sara Duterte.
Escudero tied with VP Sara in the performance rating, while Marcos landed in second place with 50 percent. Romualdez again was at the tailend with 32 percent.
And that is the tale of the tape. The true pulse of the people who can neither be dissuaded by perverse propaganda nor a ganta of rice and oodles of cash which, after all, were purchased with the people’s money.