Opposition’s 2028 ‘Plan B(aste)’

Davao City Mayor Sebastian “Baste” Duterte’s appearance in the impeachment trial could turn out to have been a crucial miscalculation.

The Marcos camp faces a simple choice: prevent Sara Duterte’s presidential bid in 2028 or risk the return of the Dutertes to the Palace and suffer their “wrath” for the rendition of the old man to The Hague.

Sara Duterte, who had early on declared her intention to run for president, remains the frontrunner in major polls. The administration’s defenders will argue that the surveys are mere snapshots, that 2028 is two years away, and that anything can happen.

This is true. But also true is that public sentiment has not, and does not look to, move in the government’s favor. Marcos’s trust rating, at 36 percent, is dismal and far from his record-high 64 percent from July 2024.

The impeachment trial, instead of dragging Sara down, has become a platform to present herself as the victim of a political vendetta. Every hearing, every procedural ruling, every prosecution witness reminds the public of the government’s obsession with its political rival rather than their plight and hardship.

Nevertheless, a conviction on even one impeachment charge could remove her from office and permanently disqualify her from seeking further office.

Because the Marcos administration knows full well it may not be able to defeat Sara at the polls, it desperately needs the Senate to convict her to prevent her inclusion on the ballot.

The 2028 election will be a referendum on the Filipino people’s acceptance of the Marcos administration’s version of accountability — where Duterte is convicted, removed from office for alleged unexplained wealth, and perpetually disqualified from further office — or their rejection of it as the weaponization of the impeachment process.

The lowered threshold aside, the math supports the likelihood of Sara’s conviction in the impeachment case. But her conviction would not be legitimate in the eyes of the public. If the people perceive the impeachment to have been a political hit job dressed in constitutional robes, the 2028 election will be a judgment not on Duterte’s guilt, but on Marcos’s methods.

In a race between Naga’s Leni Robredo and Davao’s Baste Duterte, given what the country has had to go through under the weak, indecisive, and scandal-riddled leadership of Marcos Jr., what would the Filipino be looking for in their presidentiable in 2028?

Notwithstanding the attempt to paint him as a tattooed thug, Baste appeared confident and competent when he testified in the Senate court. With that, the possible transfer of the Duterte political capital to him should Sara be sidelined was soft-launched. And this does not bode well for the Marcos Jr. administration.

The administration had rendered the old man to The Hague and is moving mountains to convict Sara Duterte. Will there be enough time for Baste to take Sara’s place in the consciousness of the Filipino people for a Duterte comeback to Malacañang? And, interestingly, will there be time to launch an attack to prevent Baste from running and winning the presidency in 2028?

Meanwhile, the ghosts of the flood control scandal, the unrelenting inflation, the fuel price hikes — and all the accumulated grievances against a presidency that has promised too much but delivered too little — will rise up to meet Marcos Jr. and his allies in the 2028 polls.