Senator Rodante Marcoleta. Angry guy. Terminally angry. He’s got that look. Like someone ate the last piece of hopia and lied about it under oath.
The man would bite into what he believes is a piece of chicken in lugaw, only to realize it’s ginger, and keeps chewing out of spite. He chews to punish it. “Nice try!”
If he ever smiled, the earth would tilt slightly; potted plants die in his presence. He doesn’t smile so much as tense silently, like someone’s about to ask him for help moving a sofa.
Witnesses would crumble. Not even Sara Duterte could handle that expression.
And they’re allies. Marcoleta never turned on her. He stayed and defended long after his loyalty stopped being useful.
Loyalty? Maybe. But more likely the refusal to abandon what he’d already claimed.
That’s the kind of obsession you want when you’re dragging skeletons out of closets.
There’s a certain poetry in Marcoleta leading the Blue Ribbon Committee. In a country where everyone else is for sale, the man who won’t sell out is terrifying. Even if you hate where he stands. Especially if you do.
We see Marcoleta for the first time in full swing, grilling witnesses at the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee over “Philippines Under Water.”
Climate change is the perfect suspect: faceless, voiceless, and immune to Senate subpoenas.
When you complain, they say: “It’s the weather, sir.” No. It’s corruption, sir. It’s cousin Ramon with a backhoe absent an engineering degree.
Marcoleta: “We should not accept this misfortune simply as the effects of climate change. It will never be a valid justification for our failure to provide shields against the inevitable.”
Boom! That’s right! Finally! Marcoleta, you madman!
Because if climate change were truly responsible, it would also own three mansions in Makati and a beach house in Siargao. It would be on the payroll, carry a government ID, have a cousin in the DPWH, and a construction empire winning every bid.
And still, they shrug and say: “It’s the new normal, nothing we can do.”
Fake news. Marcoleta can see through that immediately. Give him that excuse, and he will chew it up, spit it out, and lecture the laws themselves on insufficient rage.
China builds islands in the ocean out of sand. And we can’t build a drain?
Somebody alert Phivolcs. Marcoleta promised to leave no stone unturned. Beautiful Marcoleta phrase. Except in this country, every stone has already been turned: into condos, into malls, into somebody’s bank account in Switzerland.
Every time they turn a stone, a contractor crawls out, and he’s already been paid. Twice. Sometimes with interest.
Marcoleta cites the National Flood Roadmap, which clearly marks Pampanga, Bulacan and Metro Manila as among the worst-hit. You tell him billions flow to high, dry districts that never flood? Why spend where water never reaches while the people actually drowning get nothing?
They spent billions to “control floods;” can’t even control their bladder when Marcoleta leaned forward.
Marcoleta called it “disturbing,” polite for furious, and maybe a little hilarious if you enjoy watching a man chew the universe with his teeth.