THERE is one certainty on how the Philippine Senate now led by Alan Peter Cayetano will try the impeachment case against Vice President Sara Duterte, a constitutional mandate. The Gang of 13 that voted for a change in Senate leadership on the same day the House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to impeach Duterte will also be vigilant gatekeepers to suppress the explosive and damning evidence that the House claimed to have itemized, lurid detail after lurid detail, against the Duterte princeling.
With this endgame: Vote for acquittal at the close of the trial. The Gang of 13, after all, is a confederacy of Duterte loyalists, Duterte sympathizers, Duterte hangers-on and the usual spineless Senate fence-sitters. What decision would you expect at the end of the trial except the odious act of supplication of the Gang of 13 to their president-in-waiting.
The Gang of 13 will assign Sen. Rodante Marcoleta — the senator whose corpus of beliefs includes the nonexistence of the West Philippine Sea (WPS) complemented by a dubious grasp of cartography — a central role in that gatekeeping. An earlier Senate leadership with a composition similar to the present one, remember, assigned newbie Senator Marcoleta to chair the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee. WPS denier as top graft-buster.
If you are patient enough, you can dig into the Senate archives and read the transcripts of the Senate hearings on the multibillion flood control scandal conducted by Marcoleta when he had the Blue Ribbon baton. In doing so, you will see the marked difference between the line of questioning of the Blue Ribbon under Marcoleta and the line of questioning of the Blue Ribbon under Panfilo Lacson, who took over from Marcoleta, on the same subject matter.
I will not tire you with the details on what Marcoleta attempted to find out on the flood control scam when he was the Blue Ribbon Committee chairman. It is all too clear that it was not what Lacson uncovered and unraveled. Lacson suspects that Marcoleta was not even interested in finding the truth.
The die is cast.
The Gang of 13 will perform a charade just to demonstrate a perfunctory compliance with the constitutional mandate to try Sara Duterte for high crimes including betrayal of public trust and betrayal of the Constitution. Then will acquit. The Gang of 13 is not interested in the law, in seeking accountability, in honoring their sworn oaths to fairness and open-mindedness. The Senate putsch on May 11 engineered by this gang was precisely timed on the day the House voted to impeach Sara Duterte on a vote of 257 for and 25 against to send a middle finger to the House vote. Just look at the gang’s membership if you need the empirical proof on the trial cum charade, then the vote to acquit.
One member of the Gang of 13 — pardoned felon Robinhood Padilla — once said that if burned, his charred remains would still smell of the Dutertes. Not exactly the loftiest articulation of the depth of his blind loyalty to the Dutertes but something that the Duterte family — given the paucity of the family’s own verbal range — would appreciate. Given his shortcomings, the law confuses him no end and his reason for being in the Senate is to fight for the Dutertes’ interests. Padilla once went to the Hague where the former president Rodrigo Duterte is a awaiting his own trial for “crimes against humanity,” to demonstrate his devotion to the Duterte patriarch. He was photographed carrying around a standee of the former president with gusto, the puzzled Dutch passersby unaware of his exalted status in his home country.
Padilla’s latest caper was to render another service to a colleague in the Gang of 13 and a ka-kosa in the Duterte universe — Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa. Dela Rosa reappeared in the Senate on May 11 after a long absence, to cast a vote for a change in Senate leadership, and then to seek sanctuary in the Senate. It turned out that there was indeed an ICC-confirmed warrant of arrest against him as a co-conspirator in the “crimes against humanity” charges that led to the detention — and upcoming trial — of the Duterte patriarch at The Hague.
The following day, with dela Rosa’s claim of “protective custody” in legal jeopardy, he was spirited out of the Senate under the cover of gunfire allegedly with the help of Padilla. The “standee” guy in The Hague, now in a new role as a standout guy in dela Rosa’s getaway. In the previous century, the Senate was revered as the “best deliberative body” in the entire Philippine polity and home to the most intellectually gifted, most morally upright Filipinos. Now, it has come to this.
Critics now say it is the dumping ground for excrement masquerading as humans.
At least three members of the Gang of 13 are said to be awaiting indictment, not for crimes against humanity, but for allegedly pocketing tens of millions of pesos in kickbacks from corrupted flood control projects. Another member, Sen. Bong Go, has been named a co-conspirator like Bato in the “crimes against humanity” case now faced by the Duterte patriarch.
The Gang of 13 and the Senate president the gang installed — Alan Peter Cayetano — were scheduled to convene the impeachment body to try the case against Sara Duterte on May 18, the first step in their supposed effort to conduct a fair trial.
Don’t be deceived. What they intend to conduct is a moro-moro, wrapped in a zarzuela, enveloped in both farce and tragedy. Cayetano was recently called a disgrace by the UP-based student political party that gave him his start in politics.
