All the moves at the Senate these past two weeks by the political figures identified with the Dutertes are designed to thwart one thing: the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte. This is the broader context of the ongoing battle for control of the Senate leadership and its key committees. The importance of that battle is more symbolic than instrumental: meant to stir emotions rather than to shape any legislation.
For this bloc, two things are needed. First, to prevent the formal airing of the evidence against the vice president — or, failing that, to diminish its validity. Second, to show that the impeachment case has been hatched by corrupt people who, to shield themselves from prosecution, are bent on stopping the return of the Dutertes to power.
All of this, therefore, is about the presidential election of 2028. This loose coalition of politicians, implicated in various scandals and investigations, has no viable candidate apart from Ms. Duterte. To them, her victory in 2028 is virtually assured, given her consistently high standing in the polls. The objective is to keep that viability intact — and to boost it over the next two years by cultivating sympathy for the Duterte patriarch, now languishing in the ICC’s detention center at The Hague, awaiting trial for crimes against humanity.
So much is at stake in this election that it is difficult to imagine how the country can cross that bridge without risking political instability. If the allied forces of the Dutertes lose, many of their leaders will likely go to jail. Their ill-gotten properties will be sequestered by the state. Stripped of power and access to resources, they will lose their capacity to secure the loyalty of the poor or to buy the support of a renegade section of the military. Overnight, they will lose their grip on Mindanao.
Seen from this vantage point, the events of the past two weeks are a dress rehearsal for the real battle — the contest for the Philippine presidency in 2028. Unfortunately for the country, this contest will not be fought entirely within the parameters of the Constitution. Our recent political history has handed our politicians models of intervention that test the outer limits of constitutional politics.
That battle is being waged primarily on social media, where satirical memes and disinformation contend for mass attention, and where legal maneuvers are blended with dramatic spectacle to support calls for popular mobilization. The object of the game is to create a moving panorama of a state persecuting its enemies.
With its critical investigative eye, mainstream media has mostly met these manufactured spectacles with disdain. This has so infuriated the Duterte faction that one of its leaders, the garrulous Senator Rodante Marcoleta, has accused mainstream reporters of taking bribes and of elitist bias in their coverage. Again, what is being played out here is some populist version of the old theme of class struggle.
Nowhere was this script enacted more spectacularly than at the other day’s blue ribbon committee hearing convened by the ousted Cayetano bloc. The sessions had already been adjourned sine die, in keeping with the congressional calendar; the new majority, led by acting Senate president Sherwin Gatchalian, had sent the chamber’s staff home. Officially, no hearing was scheduled — the new blue-ribbon chair, Senator Erwin Tulfo, had called one for Monday, June 8. But the brother-and-sister tandem of Senators Alan and Pia Cayetano would not be deterred from hearing the testimony of the ex-Marines.
With the help of their ally, Senator Robinhood Padilla, they escorted 18 ex-Marines into the Senate chamber, brushing aside the security staff’s plea not to admit unauthorized persons into the building. The brief scuffle was caught on camera, the defiant Sen. Pia and Sen. Padilla leading the way.
The witnesses’ testimony largely repeated their statements from an earlier hearing. They alleged that, as “bagmen” of former Congressman Zaldy Co — then chair of the House Appropriations Committee — they delivered suitcases stuffed with millions of pesos in cash from flood-control contractors to select politicians. Those they named as recipients include President Marcos himself, former Senate president Tito Sotto, former Speaker Martin Romualdez, and a number of the House prosecutors in the impeachment case against Ms. Duterte.
Absent any concrete evidence, a fair-minded prosecutor or judge might dismiss these allegations outright. But prosecution before a proper court is plainly not the intent of the people behind these supposed ex-bagmen. Their aim is to manufacture a spectacle — one designed to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the impeachment trial. It is a strategy that will not go unchallenged at every turn in this evolving drama.
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