The son also rises

When Davao City Mayor Sebastian “Baste” Duterte took the witness stand in his sister’s impeachment trial last September, the immediate issue was hardly political succession.

He had been called to testify on Davao City transactions involving GenCorp Industries, a company Vice President Sara Duterte had declared among her business interests. The impeachment court declared him a hostile witness.

For several hours, another Duterte occupied the national stage. That did not make him an heir apparent. But politics has a habit of creating secondary stories.

For years, the Duterte national story revolved mainly around Rodrigo Duterte, who built the brand, and Sara, who became his most obvious heir. Baste was usually elsewhere in the frame.

Lately, the frame has widened.

The latest surveys continue to show a substantial political constituency around Sara Duterte. Those numbers belong to her. They cannot simply be transferred by surname, bloodline or endorsement.

Still, their persistence raises an obvious question: if circumstances ever require another standard-bearer, is there anybody else on the bench?

Then came another set of images.

In October, the ambassadors of Italy, the United States and New Zealand separately visited Davao City. US Ambassador Lee Lipton paid a courtesy call on Mayor Sebastian Duterte at City Hall, joined by Senators Bong Go and Robin Padilla.

By November, another pair of European envoys had entered the picture. The ambassadors of the Netherlands and Belgium formally sought meetings with the mayor as their countries pursued agricultural, trade and investment engagements in Mindanao.

Belgium’s mission to Davao and Davao Oriental is taking place this week, with the Dutch ambassador likewise participating in regional agriculture activities.

None of this should be romanticized.

Diplomats meet with local officials. Cities court investors. Courtesy calls are not political endorsements. But repetition changes the texture of an image.

One photograph may be ordinary diplomacy. A succession of them places the same mayor repeatedly in a wider frame. What that means, if anything, depends partly on where one stands.

Supporters may see continuity, bench depth and a political family whose relevance has survived repeated challenges.

Critics may see dynastic reproduction, name recall and the gradual normalization of another Duterte.

Others may simply see a city mayor doing the work expected of his office.

The facts do not require that all three readers reach the same conclusion. Perhaps that is precisely the point.

The Duterte bench is not shallow. Around the family remain Bong Go, Bato dela Rosa and Robin Padilla in the Senate, Paolo Duterte in Congress, and Sebastian Duterte in Davao.

In basketball parlance, “malalim ang” (it’s a deep) bench.

Yet politics is not won simply by counting who are sitting on the bench.

Sara Duterte’s numbers are not a family bank account. Foreign envoys do not confer national stature. A Senate appearance does not create a presidential candidate.

Neither, however, do these events cease to exist simply because one refuses to read anything into them.

At what point does visibility remain incidental, and at what point does it begin to acquire political meaning?

Sebastian Duterte may simply be benefiting from the gravitational pull of a powerful surname.

Or we may be watching the gradual normalization of another political figure in arenas larger than Davao.

Dynasties, after all, survive not only because families persist, but because voters, institutions and circumstances continue to find uses for the surname.

Whether that is what is happening here remains an open question.

The son also rises, perhaps. But whether he is being lifted by his own political weight, by the family name, or merely by the angle from which we are now looking at the portrait is something the reader should decide.