Once upon a time, so the story goes, they were political allies. They had big dreams and felt they needed each other. They became political friends in short. Many thought the friendship or alliance would last. The popular fiction was dubbed as the unity team.
In an imperfect world, nothing stays perfect. In turned out, there’s no such friendship, the real one you only read in children’s stories. There are no permanent friends in politics, they would soon discover, with pain and regret taking turns, only permanent interest.
The other day, the vice president plaintively asked her people for forgiveness for endorsing him as president. Both were former children of former presidents, he the only son of a former dictator, she the daughter of more or less the equivalent political animal. They were made for each other, or SO it seemed.
Before this, she resigned as Cabinet member, education secretary, to the president. Before that, she refused to attend her president’s third state-of=the nation address. She thought something bad might happen so she designated herself as the survivor, in case. She would later grumble about what’s wrong with governance under his watch.
“O what a tangled web we weave,” the poet SIr Walter Scott wrote,” when at first we practiced to deceive”.
Soon, the cat would be out of the bag. The president, or his men, said the International Criminal Court (ICC) can come and there’s no way you can stop it, Never mind if there was an earlier vow to not let the international body conduct the probe on crime against humanity allegedly committed during his father’s watch.
No, you cannot also stop the Interpol from serving the ICC’s wiarrant of arrest against the father and some of his trusted men implicated in the death of some 6,000 men, perhaps even as high as 30,000. The police organization of the world can come in handy. The sword dangles in the air.
There’s never been a tragic time for the country than it is now under the president’s watch where there is great injustice. Of course, the president’s dictator father was dethroned in 1986 in People Power Revolution for the same reason. Her father however allowed the despised dictator an honorable burial in a heroes’ hallowed ground. A nd the son also rose to the presidency after a generation in political absentia or amnesia. No thanks to her family influence.
Political retribution is conceptually par for the course. There’s an ongoing threat that three members of her family, the former president, a congressman brother and a mayoralty brother would jump unto the Senate fray in 2025. The forgiveness for the favor asked from her/their constituents is a motto: never again.
Then there’ s the children’s book she authored, wanted it printed and distributed to school children nationwide .She has 200,.000 books mind to be farmed out to children — with their parents in mind. 2028 is still a long way off. But she can’t hide the moist eye on the presidency this early. The children’s book will go a long way, and many agree.
But wait, is the P10 million budget for the book necessary?
“All grown -ups were once children but only a few remember it”, Antoine De Saint Exupery, author of the Little Prin ce, a children’ s story,wrote. What is essential is invisible to the eye, he added and is usually quoted.
Her own story is simply titled “ Isang Kaibigan” ( A Friendship() ,the story of an owl and a parrot. She said the book was inspired by her experience in life and politics. As all children stories go, hers has a moral to teach and values to cherish. The owl is held as wise and the parrot is colorful and pretty. They are metaphors. Fans fancy her as elegant and powerful like the eagle; the first lady, on the other hand, is a clumsy petite penguin according to her critics.
Seriously and objectively , it would have been a good children’s story by a Filipino lawyer and politician, a former mayor and education secretary, and current vice president of the Philippines at that. It was a literary legacy in the making.
Fortunately, it didn’t pass muster in the Philippine Senate hearing on the 2025 national budget.
Apparently , it was because of politics and not because of its content since it’s about friendship. No harm, no foul. The president or his cousin or men probably did the math.
Fast forward, in the recent budget hearing in the House of Representatives , a lion’s den ,she stood out as fearless and as feisty in defending her budget. The lawmakers, or some of them, want a full account of her spending habit as certified by a constitutional body. She’s portrayed as a spending freak, consuming millions in just a few days. She earlier knocked off a senator for politicizing the budget. She’s not going to have any of it in the House of vilifiers and political enemies.,Her budget is deferred for the time being until she answers their questions or doubts, Better luck next time.
Now the word or hearsay is out that an impeachment trap is openly talked about in the House. Somebody wants the goose cooked this early. The earlier, the better. 2025 is 2028.
“Sometimes I believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast “ Alice said in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. As a politician, the vice president lives in the wonderland of the art of the possible. It helps that she writes children’s stories,too to fire up her imagination and tighten her belly. It is well within her rational mind that she considers as many impossible things as possible in her desire to be Number One.
Good luck.
