When he was still so crazed about being powerful, so powerful indeed no one could stop him from wielding it every which way he wished, former President Duterte said that meeting an auditor on the stairway would be an unpleasant experience for the latter. Or words to that effect.
Maybe it was meant prophetically to be that way to make it less interesting to keep the impeachment trial away from public enthusiasm. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a trap only the devil is laughing at and some witless senators kept trying to make it as a non-issue.
But here is where the rubber meets the road. In the first place there is such a thing as public trust which every public official must keep in mind or keep it an option at their own peril. In the second place, some public officials must safeguard public fu nds at all times or the first test will have its due course. Democracy, it looks now, isn’t just an after thought.
Of course, there is the Irish novelist Wildes’s warning that constantly flashes like a neon sign in the mind: the best to way to fight temptation is to yield to it. For s0me, that’s the easiest thing to do especially when you have hundreds of millions in cash at your own willly -nilly disposal,even indiscretion.
Inventiveness becomes a sky is the limit experience to those endowed with the privilege to deal with such a big amount of money to do some binge on, right or wrong. Privilege becomes a password for extravagance that the prosecution correctly interprets as “bongga” in the vernacular.
It’s a not politically correct word when contextualize in many ways. There’s thousands more people, if not millions, that are hoping the government expand or extend, depending on which the political wind is blowing, the P20 per kilo of rice, given the unwieldy inflation fluctutation triggered by natural disasters and the on-and-off US—Iran discord.
At this, you wonder where the upper middle class income merg ed from nowhere, a good news that has yet to make sense to hardly make both ends meet, hoping that the end justifies the means in the existential sense. Surely, it’s not just a way out of the perceived sense of desperation in the national life that fastracks 2028 in the mind.
It’s somewhat Shakespearean, to spend per chance to dream. Can you imagine what those questionable disposable, as in a diaper, can do or undo in the presidential race in 2028? Or reversely, what great havoc can it wreak in the country’s democracy that still is processing whether what we have is intellectual deficiency among our voters or among ou r politicians?
We have gone down too far in the slippery slope, according thesec ond highest official In the land who’s just a prayer away from the highest post. Except that two things stand to block that prayer” an impeachment trial that seeks to oust her from her perch and disqualify her for life and a new case for grave threat that is meant to put her in jail.
The veep said in a media interview away from home that money has become mammon for many people, apparently politicians, in the country. You can’t serve God and mammon the Scriptures say. But Wilde’s slogan is hard to resist. See how many senators are now in jail for alleged enriching themselves through infrastructure flood projects. See how many more are likely to face legal battles, politically motivated or not as 2028 looms.
Is there a redemptive plot to the story? Obviously, that depends on who writes it. Right now, it’s the victor’s version, The headlines flaunt it. The choir sings it. Naturally, there are other voices. The administration has yet to make its earlier promise to jail the big fish before last Christmas. Some have gone abroad to live to the fullest while many poor people drown in the wake of massive flooding. At the rate the Ombudsman is going, who’s safe when even the President’s first cousin is at risk?
But first things first. The impeachment trial must have its closure, no matter how boring the defensive team wants it to be. Apparently, their hopes lies in boring the public to death so who cares who gets convicted or acquitted at the end of the day? The Department of Justice has taken the cue: it will not leave the ending in the hands of the Duterte camp. Right now, the bragging right is still the Constitution: it will take 16 votes to unseat Sara and say politically adios to her like Edgar Alan Poes’s poem to Annabelee.
The prosecution knows the public needs a show keep their attention. They must keep their toes up and nim ble to the shenanigan’s unbelievable aptitude to fairy tale truths because these are not verifiable. A flair for drama, histrionics and punchlines will save the day and hopefully the future in the land of the unlucky by choice.
There are good signs though in the Senate impeachment. As auditors become more firm on their principles and senator’judges become more cautious or silent in confronting the witness and the prosecution are happy about where they are in the game, optimism is a recommended mindset.
As the number of pro Duterte senator dwindles, for whatever reason, the Supreme Court may reset the threshold votes for conviction; it’s two thirds of a new emerging number and it’s not improbable. The President may yet fulfill to put to jail some people or somebody before Christmas.
