We can perhaps see the many ways some pro-Duterte senators are delaying or trying to stop Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial as being suggestive of their hidden deep-seated fear of sitting in judgement.
The above eccentric contention may be tough to digest, but a case can be made that it is exactly what’s going on with these senators behind closed doors.
Such fear, I suspect, comes from the tall-tale stories these senators are privately excusing themselves by — supposedly recognizing their own human frailties, they had sincerely looked at themselves in the mirror one fine morning and asked the biblical morals-laden question: “Who am I to judge?”
We are supposed to take comfort in their mock-modest human confession.
But what these senators fail to confess is that “Who am I to judge,” as political philosopher Hannah Arendt put it long ago, “actually means we’re all alike, equally bad, and those who try, or pretend that they try, to remain halfway decent are either saints or hypocrites…”
Refusing to judge and uphold their constitutional duty, therefore, is a Veep-besotted senator who is charging everyone else with having unsavory motives, including fellow senators who want to responsibly try the case on its legal merits and then give a well thought-out balanced verdict on the Veep’s alleged indiscretions.
The Veep-besotted senator, of course, hasn’t explicitly said so or admitted this is his or her primary charge.
But they are indirectly confirming this charge by the routinary and easy excuse that their anti- impeachment tactics are attributable to political loyalty or expediency.
Much, however, can be said against trusting those stale, though temptingly credible, excuses.
Take for instance the case of Senator-judge Migz Zubiri, who last week proffered exactly the same stale point of view when he branded the Veep’s impeachment trial as a “witch hunt” supposedly designed to derail her 2028 presidential hopes.
As expected, the House impeachment prosecutors and other critics didn’t take kindly to Zubiri’s summary prejudgment.
Zubiri hasn’t exactly made himself notorious as to whether he is indeed a stuffy acolyte of the pro-Duterte camp or not.
But by confessing that he is personally spooked by the Veep’s 2028 bid, Zubiri made his “witch hunt” prejudgment speak loudly of the fears a politician often harbors in trying to survive politics: political loyalties and expediencies.
Additionally, Zubiri is sneakily trying to convince us that we should see the Veep’s trial solely as the newest variation of the evolving bitter Marcos-Duterte feud. Here, Zubiri means to say the feud bestows upon everything some deeper political meaning.
But Zubiri is also intending something else. Because the moment anyone fixes specific blame for recent political events rather than seeing the Veep as a flesh and blood official effectively makes people lose track of the vital fact the Veep is appearing before a tribunal because she allegedly broke some laws regarded as essential to the integrity and accountability in spending government funds.
Similarly, hastily using surveys showing the public’s supposedly confused views on the Veep’s impeachment trial is of the same hoodwinking pattern. The public, however, is only saying let’s see what unfolds in the trial.
How such surveys become advantageous to the pro-Veep senator is because they provide another expedient excuse that a senator-judge cannot now properly judge right from wrong since the majority of his political base has already prejudged the case.
Anyway, all of the above concerns belabor the point that what wily politicians often publicly say in defending their moves often reveals what they are afraid of.