[Newspoint] Crash landing

Rodrigo Duterte rode a ballistic trajectory of fate, soaring on the wings of power and entitlement only to crash-land into a mire of helplessness and desperation. And his heir apparent, daughter Sara, appears on a similar tragic ride.

For Rodrigo, the ride took all of a generation. The flight was as long and high as the plunge was sudden and precipitous. He had ruled as an autocratic mayor of his native Davao City for more than 20 years before a national vote — apparently similarly inspired by his iron-fisted disposition — put him in the presidency.

Sure enough, his presidency was characterized by patronage and cronyism. Within the regular presidential term of six years, he managed to do enough to rival Ferdinand E. Marcos‘ 14-year dictatorship, which stands as the standard — for plunder, murder, repression, indeed for official notoriety.

In fact, Duterte’s presidency was so infamously eventful it takes little effort to summon up cases in point offhand. Here are some:

• As now alleged in multiple suits, he made family and cronies fat with corruption (the pandemic provided a particular opportunity).
• He more than doubled the national debt, from P5.9 trillion to P12.79 trillion.
• He was able to fill 13 of the 15 Supreme Court seats by a mix of fortune and manipulation (all but one of the vacancies were created by retirement, the only exception occurring after the chief justice appointed by his predecessor had been ousted in a mutiny mounted by the justices he had himself appointed).
• He doubled the salaries of the soldiers and the police with the all-too-obvious intent of buying their loyalty — and also put newly retired generals in sensitive posts in the civilian bureaucracy.

Apart from those acts attended by corruption, the others may not seem illegal at all. Presidents either are bound by duty or find the need to undertake them, although they need not be told that they are expected to do it advisedly. It was hardly the case with Duterte — he mostly did it to an insidious purpose. And, in the following two cases, he definitely crossed the line, specifically into treason and murder, respectively:

• He ceded control over the mineral-rich West Philippine Sea to China, the rival claimant that lost its case in international arbitration; the betrayal resulted in the barring of Filipino fishermen from their own fishing grounds and also in the influx of Chinese nationals and the proliferation of Chinese criminal enterprises in the country — drugs, gaming, loan-sharking, human trafficking, and possibly espionage.
  
• His war on drugs ended up with tens of thousands dead by extrajudicial killing — EJK, as the murders have come to be known.

Rodrigo Duterte continued to take the limelight even in retirement. He even found occasion to use congressional hearings as a platform to get back at his critics. Definitely, the sense of impunity had not worn away one bit.

Well, not until that one fateful day. Returning home on March 11, 2025, from Hong Kong, where he had just addressed Filipino crowds and mocked the effort of the International Criminal Court to get him for EJK, he was arrested upon landing in Manila on a warrant issued by that court and served by Interpol. Before the day was over, he had been flown to the court’s headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands. He has since been detained there while being processed for trial for crimes against humanity.

Meantime, Sara has taken up the torch for dynasty and constituency and declared for the presidency for the 2028 elections. Possessing the normally conceded advantage of incumbency as the sitting vice president, and with good poll numbers, she appears a strong contender. But with no one else having declared and the elections two years out yet, will her lead hold?

In fact, it is beginning to dissipate. Doubtless, that has to do with the impeachment proceedings being pursued against her in the House of Representatives. Broadcast live nationwide, the proceedings have become the talk of the town — a survey shows that 7 in 10 Filipinos wish to see her go to trial in the Senate.

And this time, the case — the second brought against her — is almost sure to go through. The first, initiated in 2024, did reach the Senate, but the Duterte-friendly senators, who made up the majority, sat on the case for months, giving the Supreme Court time to intervene — it eventually ruled Sara’s impeachment technically flawed.

The intervention triggered a storm of criticisms for the overreach — the Supreme Court insinuating itself in an exclusively Congress business. Apparently preferring to concede for now in order to avoid further complications, Congress simply mounted a new round of impeachment.

Sara returned to the Supreme Court, but it either has become chastened or found no more excuses for her. In any case, it has so far done her no further favors, and doesn’t seem likely to come around with any.

The indications could not have been lost on Sara herself. She appears desperate to the point of coming unhinged. Now more than at any other time, she proliferates social media, blabbing away, as if the mere ubiquitous sight of her and sound of her voice, however senseless, could obliterate what negative impressions the impeachment hearings may have made of her. Her trolls follow in lockstep.

I don’t think all this has to do with the prospect of being found guilty as impeached and consequently removed as vice president and also barred from taking public office ever again, for, even after the midterms tilted the majority in the Senate, it still won’t be easy to come up with the two-thirds vote required for that — 16 out of 24. I think Sara’s anxieties come from the likelier prospect of her being decidedly revealed to the nation as a grand embezzler and also someone who resorts to contract killing, revelations that cannot but harm her presidential run.

More specifically, Sara Duterte is accused of misappropriating hundreds of millions of pesos of taxpayer money and hiring assassins to kill President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his wife, and his cousin, the former speaker. So far, she has allowed the testimonies against her to go unrebutted. As in the first impeachment case, she has boycotted the hearings on this one.

But with no Supreme Court to rescue her from Congress this time, she could, as in her father’s case, be destined for a crash landing. – Rappler.com