Tag Archives: Duterte

Qwertyman No. 158: Other Battles to Fight

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Qwertyman for Monday, August 11, 2025

A LOT has been said this past week about the 12-0 decision of the Supreme Court on the impeachment case against Vice President Sara Duterte essentially supporting her contention that the one-year rule against bringing up new impeachment charges had been violated by the House of Representatives, and pushing back the earliest date for any resumption of such charges to February 6, 2026.

Predictably, the decision raised a storm of protest involving no less than former Justices of the Court, our top legal luminaries and lawyers’ organizations, and key media and political personalities who accused the Court of judicial overreach. On the other side were somewhat more muted voices calling for respecting the Court’s judgment—including, surprisingly or otherwise, a very sedate Sen. de la Rosa, now all flush with legal wisdom and temperance; to be fair, some of these people were hardly Duterte fans, but likely just citizens tired of all the bashing going on. (The Senate’s subsequent vote to “archive” the impeachment complaint would catch even more flak.)

However this issue is ultimately settled, one thing is clear: the Filipino public’s trust and confidence in their political institutions has hit a new low. And contrary to certain suggestions, it’s not because of journalists and gadflies like me who seem keen on tearing the house down, but because, well—it’s in the nature of the beast (or the human) for something so supposedly venerable as our Supreme Court to behave strangely in certain situations. 

The controversy stirred up by the Court in the Duterte case reminded me of a passage that I quoted in my recently published biography of retired Associate Justice and Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales, who has also manifested an opinion contrary to that of her current peers. The quotation comes from the former law dean and legal scholar Pacifico A. Agabin, who wrote in his book The Political Supreme Court (Quezon City: UP Press, 2012):

“The Supreme Court, like the US Supreme Court, is both an appellate and a constitutional court. Unlike most countries in Europe, we do not have a constitutional court, and so our high tribunal performs these dual functions under the Constitution. And when it decides constitutional cases, it becomes a political body, just like the executive and legislative branches. ‘Political,’ as used here, means that it acts as a legislature, according to Richard Posner, in the sense of having and exercising discretionary power as capacious as a legislature’s. According to Posner, ‘constitutional cases in the open area are aptly regarded as ‘political’ because the Constitution is about politics and because cases in the open area are not susceptible of confident evaluation on the basis of professional legal norms.’ Thus, when the court decides constitutional cases, it becomes a political organ. Like a chameleon, it changes color and assumes a different role as a political body.

“To repeat, I use the term ‘political’ here not in its partisan sense, but more in its ideological connotations. Unfortunately, there is no dividing line between the ideological and the partisan meanings, and sometimes, these blur into each other. The court itself sometimes fall into the partisan trap.

“This holds especially true in a personalistic culture like ours, where values like utang na loob and pakikisamaare embedded in the Filipino’s subconscious.”

Now, that’s all still very high-minded, but another memory that’s even more disturbing comes from a book that I edited (anonymously, because I didn’t want to be saddled with a libel case—as its author inevitably was): Shadow of Doubt: Probing the Supreme Court (Newsbreak, 2010), written by my friend, the prizewinning journalist Marites Vitug. In her prologue, she recalls this incident:

“During an interview, after I asked an aspiring candidate to the Supreme Court about the unsavory realities of the appointment process, he advised me to tread carefully. The candidate, a Justice of a mid-level court, was fearful of the effects of a book that would pry into the sanctuary of the Supreme Court and ruffle the institution. 

“Over an oatmeal breakfast (mine) and coffee (his), he worried that the public may lose their confidence in the Court. He then told me the story of a staff member of a Supreme Court Justice decades ago. This man had access to confidential information and, after learning of Court decisions, immediately approached winning litigants and informed them that he could work on their cases and get favorable results. He asked for money—and, voila, delivered them the good news when the decisions were promulgated. He always had happy clients.

“The Justice I was speaking with was, at the time, working on the Court. Disturbed by the corrupt behavior of a colleague, he reported this to the Chief Justice. However, the Chief Justice took a benign, almost indifferent view. He told the young lawyer that this would soon come to an end because the erring staff member was about to leave the Court; he held a post co-terminus with that of his boss, an associate Justice. 

“It was best, the Chief Justice said, to let it pass. He feared that if the Court acted on it and the anomalies became known to the public, confidence in the ‘last bulwark of democracy’ would wane. It was paramount to keep the institution pristine in the eyes of the public, never mind if wrongdoing was gnawing the Court.

“The Justice looked back at this moment and narrated the story to impress on me how important it is to protect the institution. For him and the Chief Justice who initiated him into this misplaced patriotism, strengthening the institution meant glossing over grave offenses.”

I’m not a lawyer (something we very often hear these days, followed by some legalistic opinion), but my pedestrian sense tells me that this Court and this Senate aren’t going to dig themselves out of the hole they’ve jumped into. Pinoy officialdom never admits mistakes and apologizes, like the Japanese do; we love to brazen it out with the thickest of cheeks. 

Given that, let’s not hang our expectations on this one peg of VP Sara Duterte’s impeachment. Whether she gets impeached or not, she’ll still have to answer for the serious charges brought against her, perhaps with even more finality than her removal from office will bring. 

February 6, 2026 is less than six months away. Let the prosecutors use the time to prepare an airtight case that will secure a clear conviction, in the court of public opinion if not in the Senate tribunal—a case so compelling that it will embarrass any senator-judge who will ignore its logic (and let’s face it, there will be many), and hold him or her accountable to the people at the next election.

In the meanwhile, we have many other and far more consequential battles to fight—our bloated budget, our growing debt, the illiteracy of our youth, the hunger and homelessness of our poor. These can’t be “archived,” and the “forthwith” on these issues came and went a long time ago.

Qwertyman No. 156: That Bam-Kiko Thing

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Qwertyman for Monday, July 28, 2025

RETURNING SENATORS Bam Aquino and Kiko Pangilinan have been getting roasted online for joining the majority bloc in the incoming Senate, thereby securing important committee chairmanships under the highly unpopular but tough-to-unseat Senate President Chiz Escudero. Despite sympathetic reactions from such opposition stalwarts as former VP and now Naga Mayor Leni Robredo and Sen. Risa Hontiveros, the two have been roundly scored for their decision.

Typical of the outcry was this much circulated post by a friend I deeply admire, the penal and judicial reformer Raymund Narag, who lamented that “They will join the majority. The same majority that excuses corruption as politics, power as protection, and self-interest as national interest. But what they forget is that we voted for them not to play the game. They forget that it was not just about committees, or positions, or so-called influence. It was about principle. We mourn the death of idealism in Philippine politics. But it’s a slow death. Not by assassination, not by defeat, but by compromise. And the executioners are the very people who once called themselves idealists.”

It’s a heavy to charge to lay at the feet of these two men—turncoatism, betrayal, the surrender of idealism, latent hypocrisy—and I can see where the disappointment and dismay are coming from. But with all due respect to my friend Raymund and to those who share his sentiments, I don’t see these dire reversals at all in the choices that Bam and Kiko made, but possibly an interesting and potentially significant maturing of our political culture, especially within the opposition.

It’s true that the Bam-Kiko decision came as a surprise, and that things would have been much clearer, the battle lines much more cleanly drawn, had they sat with Sen. Risa Hontiveros in a true and unflinching albeit tiny minority, duking it out with the majority at every turn, exposing wrongdoing right and left, and remaining unblemished by compromise to the end of their term. We could have remembered them for their impassioned speeches in defense of democracy and justice, tilting against the windmills of the Marcos-Duterte regime.

But I don’t think that’s all or what we elected these two senators for—or was it? As far as I can tell, we voted for them to get things done—the good, the right, and the best things—where they mattered, in their areas of expertise: Bam in education, and Kiko in agriculture. Granted, it may have been secondary to sending a message upstairs that these were the good guys, infinitely much better than the trapos being foisted on us by both the Marcos and Duterte factions, but it was their track record that gilded their credentials.

In case we’ve forgotten or weren’t listening too closely when they were campaigning, Bam Aquino authored 51 laws, including the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, the Go Negosyo Act, and the Microfinance NGOs Act. He was also behind the Masustansyang Pagkain para sa Batang Pilipino Act and the No Shortchanging Act of 2016. Kiko Pangilinan, an even more seasoned lawmaker, produced over 150 laws, including the Sagip Saka Act, the Coconut Farmers and Industry Trust Fund Act, and the 105-Day Expanded Maternity Leave Law.

Their acceptance of the agriculture and education chairmanships should help ensure and strengthen their ability to pursue these progressive initiatives further—regardless of how they think about and vote on other issues of national consequence, such as the impeachment of VP Sara Duterte, the national budget, our foreign policy, and constitutional change. 

We have yet to see—as their critics already seem to have foretold—if they will cherish their chairmanships to the extent of abandoning their fundamental principles. Instead I foresee the greater likelihood of the reverse happening: of Bam and Kiko relinquishing their posts should their stay there prove morally untenable. If they were to perform well in their Senate positions, and they were then stripped of their chairmanships for their independent stances, then that still would be more emphatic than if they had never assumed the responsibilities that are also their entitlements, according to their competencies.

But in and of itself, joining the majority bloc—never a firm nor a politically or philosophically cohesive entity in our system of what Shakespeare called “vagabond flags”—should be less of a deal or an issue than it is being made out to be. This “majority,” in any case, seems such a ragtag band that it is almost certain to collapse before the end of the present term.

It probably says more about us as an electorate than about Bam and Kiko when we cast their decision as a “betrayal” of what they were presumably voted for. I’m no political scientist so the experts can explain this better than I can, but it seems to me that we’ve become used to seeing our legislature as a forced marriage of fundamentally incompatible forces—the ruling party (powerful but unintelligent, corrupt, opportunist, cynical, good-for-nothing) and the opposition (weak but progressive, smart, morally upright, idealistic, courageous, media-savvy, and effective). We see the Senate as an arena, a battleground (and often a circus), rather than an office where people are supposed to work, and work together (never mind that some of them are lazy and stupid), achieving results through compromise.

Bam and Kiko just need to prove themselves once more at their jobs and serve the Filipino to the best of their ability, so that when 2028 comes—and whatever their plans may be for that next milestone—they can have a good answer to the basic question that our voters have every right to ask: “So what have you done for me?” It’s a question that the elevated rhetoric of the progressive opposition has sadly often ignored and dearly paid for, almost as if it were beneath consideration. Bam and Kiko need a platform from which to connect corruption to the price of rice, to persistent flooding, to the failure of Filipino children to read at Grade 3. 

Of course, it can be said that that’s exactly what Risa Hontiveros has been doing all by her lonesome—without the benefit of patronage, and with just the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality to her name. She sponsored the passage of the Expanded Solo Parents Welfare Act, the Safe Spaces Act which protects Filipinos, especially women, from gender-based harassment in public spaces, and the Anti-Online Sexual Abuse or Exploitation of Children Law.

Taking another tack but manifesting the same tenacity, Sen. Loren Legarda has survived through many administrations in all kinds of political weather, drawing criticism for that ability, but has remained steadfast in her commitment to protecting the environment, mitigating climate change, and promoting Philippine arts and culture like no other senator nor President for that matter has. 

But for what they’ve already done and could yet do, I think Bam and Kiko deserve our trust. Let’s cut them some slack and give them a chance. We pinklawans aren’t the only voters they’re answerable to.

(Photo from rappler.com)

Qwertyman No. 155: Deflections and Reflections

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Qwertyman for Monday, July 21, 2025

FAR BE it from me to serve as an apologist for the Marcoses, who can easily hire half of Makati and Ortigas, not to mention Madison Avenue, to front for them. 

But speaking as a curious citizen, I’ve been wondering about the recent rash of posts online drawing attention to the unfortunate death in the United States of a member of the Tantoco clan, reportedly from a drug overdose. 

The peg was that the ongoing investigation into the disappearance and presumed murder of 110 sabungeros—which reached a climax with the explosive revelations of a whistleblower and the retrieval of possible bones from Taal Lake—was a massive ploy to deflect attention from the real issue, which was First Lady Liza Araneta Marcos‘ rumored involvement in the Tantoco case. 

That death happened in March. Contrary to allegations that it was swept under the rug, or that a media blackout was imposed by the Palace, Rappler has noted on its website that “Mainstream media outlets have reported earlier on the death of the Rustan executive, who died on March 9 at the age of 44. Examples of these news items include a March 9 Manila Bulletin article, a March 10 Philstar.com article, a March 10 GMA News Online article, a March 10 Manila Times article, a March 11 Rappler article, a March 11 ABS-CBN News article, and a March 12 Daily Tribune article.” 

So why the sudden buzz? Because a newspaper columnist known to be a Duterte trumpet very recently came out with an “exposé” claiming that, according to a report supposedly released by the Beverly Hills Police Department, First Lady Liza was among those interviewed by the police after Paolo Tantoco’s death. The BHPD subsequently declared the report to have been tampered with, pointing out that the portion implicating the First Lady had been tacked on.

But the “exposé” was touted as big news in DDS-land, proof of the veracity of which was the rattled haste with which the administration (1) trotted out a “whistleblower” in the lost sabungeros case, followed by divers dramatically fishing out sacks of bones (with the Atong Ang-Gretchen Barretto angle as a saucy aside); and (2) exhumed the long-dead issue of Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro’s Maltese passport, which he had long surrendered. A timeline put out on YouTube by a Duterte publicist “proved” that after every iteration of the “Tantoco-FL” case, a “diversion” engineered by Malacañang immediately ensued, starting with the death itself, followed by the sensational arrest of Rodrigo Duterte and his quick deportation to the Hague for trial by the ICC.

In short, a lot of labor has gone into this conspiracy theory which would have us believe that PRRD was whisked off to the Netherlands, that the lost cockfighters were suddenly found, and that Gibo Teodoro’s loyalties are questionable—just to deflect attention from the real and the most important story (since shown to be fake) that the First Lady was somehow involved in the death of a prominent Filipino family scion. It would be the cover-up of the (21st) century for Pinoys, if true—and a mountain of poop to swallow, which many of the DDS faithful apparently have no difficulty ingesting. And not just them, either—I’ve heard the “Cover-up! Cover-up!” line being echoed by some of my liberal friends.

My own pedestrian take is, so what if FL were somehow involved in the Tantoco case, nefariously or otherwise? So what if Malacañang panicked and sought to quash the news by thinking of gimmicks to overshadow it? Rodrigo Duterte still needed to be shipped off to the Hague to face justice, and he was. The missing sabungeros, more than a hundred of them, still need to be found, and they may have been. If good results come out of shady decisions, I’m thankful they did.

But let me try on that same conspiratorial hat that seems so fetching on DDS heads. It’s a loose fit on mine, but reflecting on these matters like a true conspiracist, where do you suppose all these feeds are coming from, and why? Who stands to benefit from all this disinformation, and has the wherewithal to support a network of trolls, columnists, and “political analysts” all trying to divert public attention from what should be the biggest political story of the moment—VP Sara’s impending impeachment case—to some fake cover-up? 

The Dutertes stand to benefit, of course, but the impish fictionist in me says the hand of a larger patron can’t be discounted—particularly when you factor in the Gibo subplot, which concerns a possible presidential candidate who has been very vocal in his criticism of a northern bully. (The operatives peddling the “distraction” story, not incidentally, are the same people who keep reminding us that we asked to be bullied by filing that frivolous and unfriendly suit laying claim to our own territory.)

But of course I could be overthinking, which then again becomes any aspiring and self-respecting conspiracy theorist. I’ll get the hang of it, one of these days. 

 Maybe I’ll begin with the “traitorous” tandem of Bam and Kiko—as they’re now being made out to be even by some of their staunchest supporters—signing up with the Senate majority to worm their way into DDS hearts, so maybe one of them could be Sara’s running mate in 2028 under a broad anti-Marcos alliance. Wild? Can anything run too wild in the Pinoy’s fevered political imagination?

(Image from YouTube)

Qwertyman No. 154: Politics as Melodrama

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Qwertyman for Monday, July 14, 2025

I’VE OFTEN argued that our most popular literary form isn’t lyric poetry, the short story, and certainly not the novel—it’s theater, and more specifically melodrama. Born in the West in the 18th century, melodrama weaves its spell on a suggestible audience through sensational and often ridiculous plots, exaggerated action, overblown emotion, and contrived solutions—all of which viewers happily lap up, and come back looking for more. When you think about it, it also happens to describe our politics, but more on that later.

I used to bring up melodrama when I taught playwriting and screenwriting, by way of analyzing how our Filipino sense of drama works. You don’t have to be a theater scholar or critic to observe that we Pinoys love drama, which to us really means melodrama, whether onstage, onscreen, or in real life.

Subtlety and silence have never been our strongest suit. We like to shout, to scream, to declare, to explain—and to explain some more. Take, for example, our preferred methods of murder. In Hamlet, the villainous Claudius pours poison into the king’s, his brother’s, ear. In The Seventh Seal, a knight faces Death on the chessboard. That may have been thrilling for fans of Shakespeare and Ingmar Bergman—but terribly dull and anesthetic for our kind of crowd.

No, sir, we Pinoys like our killings obvious, loud, and emphatic. Poison in the ear is for sissies. We prefer knives because they mean business, are as personal as personal can get, and they produce a lot of cinematic blood. And it’s never enough to stab someone, certainly not from behind, which would be a complete waste of dramatic possibilities. We like to announce that we’re killing someone, and to explain the reasons why: “Hudas ka, Raymundo, niyurakan mo ang karangalan ng aming angkan, kaya’t tanggapin mo ngayon ang mariing higanti ng hustisya—heto’ng sa iyo!” But of course Raymundo has to have his moment, and must raise that inevitable question: “Ano’ng ibig mong sabihin?” Whereupon our hero launches into another lengthy explanation, to which Raymundo offers an impassioned rebuttal, all to no avail, as he is stabbed repeatedly to the accompaniment of further oaths and recriminations.

I used to think that this kind of talkativeness and effusive gesturing was invented by us, until I went to graduate school and realized that it was all over the place in Restoration drama, where the likes of John Dryden had his characters indulge in copious speechifying in the name of love and honor before killing everyone onstage. I suppose a similar trend seized the French and Spanish theater, and thereby later ours, in the zarzuelas, moro–moros, and komedyas that provided us with both entertainment and education. The noisiness carried over to radio, and then to our movies, which never quite shook off the “Ano’ng ibig mong sabihin?” habit. 

And this brings us to our politics, which is not only full of sound and fury, of unbridled verbosity, but of plot twists that strain credulity and yet which manage to keep the audience on the edge of their seats, either roaring in rage, applauding in delight, laughing deliriously, or weeping in sorrow, depending on their persuasions.

The Duterte Saga, our biggest ongoing drama, is now in its fourth act—the Sara impeachment—after the Uniteam victory, the fallout, and the Digong arrest and banishment. A professional scriptwriter could not have done better than giving the VP lines like Sara’s vengeful vows, as the media reported: “I have talked to a person. I said, if I get killed, go kill BBM (Marcos), (First Lady) Liza Araneta, and (Speaker) Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke,” Duterte said in the profanity-laden briefing. “I said, do not stop until you kill them and then he said yes.” Threatened with impeachment for that statement and for corruption, she said, “I truly want a trial because I want a bloodbath.”

To the uninitiated listener, a madwoman was merely frothing at the mouth, but to the theater-goer, she’s puffing up her feathers, going larger than life, saying outrageous things to define her character and stake out her space like a Maori dancing the haka. Her adversary, PBBM, is playing cool and coy, pretending to be occupied with work and a disinterested party in Sara’s undoing. And yet he whisks off her precious papa in the night to Scheveningen, provoking even more outbursts from the DDS faithful.

Now comes the tearful part. Melodrama moves from Olympian thunder to cloying tenderness, so our next scene, naturally, has Sara’s mom Elizabeth declaring that her estranged husband has been reduced in detention to “skin and bones.” But it’s all right, she says bravely. “And how is my son, acting Mayor Baste?” the Davao City mayor-in-exile asks in a dry croak. “He’s okay, too,” Elizabeth assures him. “His vice mayor is your grandson!” So but for the absent patriarch, all’s well in Duterteland—sort of.

Melodramas love subplots, so let’s introduce one: selling the Duterte house. Common-law wife Honeylet puts up a sign announcing the place for sale (“It’s too painful to sleep there all by myself,” she claims), but son Baste reportedly has the sign removed. Not so fast, VP Sara chimes in; Honeylet could sell her half of it but not her dad’s. Besides, where would Digong live when he returns from the Hague, if Honeylet sold the house? (Cue for hopeful, uplifting music, which tapers off into a melancholic minor key.) “Perhaps he could live with Mama Elizabeth again,” Sara muses. 

Ah, such poignant moments. No one’s been stabbed yet—expect a lot of that to happen, metaphorically, if and when the Senate finds its balls and starts the impeachment trial of VP Sara. What’s theater without traitors? Sen. Migz Zubiri has already thrown down the gauntlet by declaring the trial “a witch-hunt.” But Senator Migz, ano’ng ibig mong sabihin?

Qwertyman No. 148: Pondering the Inconceivable

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Qwertyman for Monday, June 2, 2025

IT SOUNDS like wishful thinking at the moment, but is there even a faint possibility that—in the aftermath of the midterm elections and looking ahead to the next big one down the road—President Bongbong Marcos might be willing to back a progressive candidate to take his place? And would liberal (with a small L) forces accept his help?

Just a few years ago this idea would have been totally preposterous, the relationship between the two sides being one of utter incompatibility and mutual revulsion. Marcos (more the name and what it stood for than Junior himself) was seen as the devil incarnate, while BBM would have deemed unforgivable his family’s ignominious banishment into exile in  Hawaii.

During the May 2022 election, Leni Robredo’s partisans (myself among them) made sure our people remembered the trail of blood and misery that martial law left behind, and the Marcoses’ unpaid debts to the treasury, and to the nation itself.

His election victory was met with profound disbelief and distress; we felt unmoored and stunned for a brief spell (much like the Democrats today, reeling under Trump’s relentless barrage of idiotic but effectively discombobulating executive orders). We took refuge in the certainty that this administration would quickly self-destruct from BBM’s incompetence and from its own internal contradictions—a prediction that has now partially come true, albeit with the most unexpected ramifications.

The spectacular collapse of the “Uniteam” was predictable; it had always been a marriage of convenience, seemingly forged to install BBM as a seatwarmer for VP Sara and the eventual restoration of the Dutertes in Malacañang. No one knew that better than BBM; there was talk (as there will always be, in this country of gifted storytellers) that the Dutertes weren’t even going to let him finish his term, but find a way to ease him out earlier so Sara could do a GMA and rule for longer than six years. So, went the buzz, BBM beat her to the draw by getting her impeached in the House (for good reason) and packing her father off to the Netherlands (for even better reasons).

Now comes the tricky part, which is getting Sara impeached (and struck out of the presidency for good) in the Senate—a newly reconstituted Senate that needs only nine of its 24 members to resist, and thereby keep the Dutertean dream alive. That court will convene sometime this month, with the outcome far from predetermined, but apparently leaning, at the moment, toward acquittal. Two administration senatorial bets—Imee Marcos and Camille Villar—jumped ship, making a crucial difference; the current pro-Sara tally now runs to a comfortable 11, if both Cayetanos, both Villars, and both Estrada siblings (now you see why dynasties are a bad idea?) see a longer horizon for their political futures with Sara on top. 

However, as they say, it ain’t over till it’s over, and the same opportunism that led to this tangle could just as easily turn it around within weeks or months, however long the impeachment trial is going to take. Observers note that at the last big impeachment trial—that of the late Supreme Court Justice Renato Corona—the odds were hugely in his favor at the start, but compelling evidence eventually made it not only unreasonable but politically untenable to acquit him at the end (although notably, his faithful supporter Senator BBM survived and even prospered). A strong prosecution—and, let’s admit, some backroom wooing and strong-arming—could yet land Sara in political limbo.

And that had better happen, because as BBM well knows, if the impeachment fails, his party has no candidate from within strong enough to take on the Dutertes. His apparent anointed, House Speaker Martin Romualdez, has about as much charisma and appeal as a thawed-out tamilok. Apart from the surprise victories of Bam Aquino and Kiko Pangilinan (about which more, later), the one big takeaway from the midterms was the continued strength of the Duterte forces on a national scale, never mind their isolation in Mindanao. An unverified post-election report (again, from the Bureau of Speculation) claimed that in a survey of early votes cast by the military and police, the Duterte slate scored a perfect ten. Why? Well, didn’t PRRD fatten the military, doubling their salaries and raising their retirement benefits? And aside from the mediagenic generals and admirals, who really wants to fight China in the West Philippine Sea? (Not my opinion, folks, just passing it along.)

If and when Sara wins, BBM and the Marcoses may find themselves taking another flight out in the night for parts unknown. The “bloodbath” Sara promised won’t be at the trial, but in its aftermath.

So we return to my first question: can and will BBM find it in himself to support a progressive and acceptable candidate from the middle forces, someone like Sen. Risa Hontiveros? If he insists on fielding his own man and the center-left puts up their candidate, it won’t take a political scientist to figure that as things stand, in a three-cornered fight, Sara will win. The Marcoses will be history (again) and the progressives crushed even more.

An argument can be made for the once-unthinkable. Against all expectations, BBM has done the right thing in de-Dutertizing government, (largely) stopping tokhang, and taking a firm stance for Philippine sovereignty in the WPS. On these issues, we can unite, at least for the time being. It will not be idle thinking to suspect that Bam and Kiko won not by divine miracle but with some backhanded nudge from the administration, who needed them to shore up its Senate votes (Bam, after all, was carried by the INC—as was Marcoleta, so it evens out). BBM’s Cabinet revamp shows signs of sensitivity to expectations and keenness on delivery, if only to shore up his administration for 2028.

He’ll never publicly admit it, but if BBM is truly intent on some measure of redemption for the Marcos name and on making his own mark on the presidency, this could be his historic opportunity. He will do well to support the progressives; it will be an easier and more logical switch than for the progressives to support an anointed trapo. BBM can take a free ride on the idealism of the middle forces, who are his best buffer against both Left and Right extremes.

But then again, all this comes to you sponsored by Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, makers of the Everlasting Gobstopper and other fabulous confections.

Qwertyman No. 145: The Devil on My Shoulder

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Qwertyman for Monday, May 12, 2025

TODAY, ONCE again, we troop to the polling booths in the hope of making our votes matter—votes that, if the cynics are to be believed, might as well be dust in the wind. The surveys have spoken, the winners named. All that remains is for this day to be over, for the formalities to be done with, for the supposedly inevitable to play itself out. And then we’ll watch the new-old Senators of the Republic proclaimed in a ceremony that will showcase the state of our electoral mind. 

As absurd as it may seem, many Pinoys will actually be happy with the outcome—that’s what the surveys are all about, aren’t they? These are the senators we wanted—or most of us, anyway. “Most of them” is probably what you’re thinking, if you’re a regular reader of this column and agree with most of my views.

I can’t think of a more complicated election in recent times, in terms of an answer to the question of “What’s in our best interest as Filipinos, and how do we make that happen?”

The idealist in me has the simplest and probably the morally most unambiguous response: vote for the best candidates, period: the intelligent, the progressive, the principled, the proven, the humane, the hardworking, the uncompromised. Whether they win or lose, it shouldn’t matter—you’ve done your best as a responsible citizen; in a sense, you’ve won. I sorely want to believe this, and to do this today.

But persistently, impishly, like a little devil perched on my shoulder, a contrarian spirit urges me to temper my idealism with some consideration of its practical costs.

Last week in California, a Fil-Am friend asked me to explain the significance of these elections. In the US, midterms usually mean a referendum on the incumbent President’s performance, and next year will most definitely be one for the Orange Pope and his systematic dismantling of American democracy.

For us Filipinos, May 2025 isn’t that clear-cut—although it should have been, if the armies of May 2022 had remained in place, leaving us with a stark choice between the good and the bad.

But the ruling “Uniteam” alliance has since collapsed, with each side fielding its own troubled slate of aspirants, all seething with the most primal of motives: survival, revenge, profit, and opportunity.

The opposition seems to be a loose coalition of liberal, Left, and anti-administration forces. Among these, four names have consistently surged to the top in the kind of social media neighborhood I inhabit. I’ll call them my Triple A candidates, the ones I won’t have any second thoughts about, leaving me with eight more spots to fill.

It’s those eight that give me pause—not for any lack of qualified and virtuous prospects, but because there could be dire consequences for not filling up the rest of my ballot, as some have suggested, or voting for names without a prayer of winning, as a matter of principle (or, by this time, by force of habit).

It’s interesting to observe how, unlike in previous elections where voting straight for a party’s slate was the norm, various formulas and menus have emerged on social media—cafeteria or halo-halo style—to reflect this urge for some balance between the ideal and the practical in this three-cornered fight. Even opposition stalwarts, including Leni Robredo herself, have been excoriated for their previously unthinkable endorsements of certain candidates from the other side. Whatever happened to ideological purity? (It was always an illusion: note the Left’s earlier alliances with a notoriously bloodthirsty Digong Duterte and an unabashedly capitalist Manny Villar.)

I think many Filipinos understand what’s at stake in this election—not just who will compose the next Senate, but what that composition will mean. As I told my Fil-Am friend, Rodrigo Duterte may be safely imprisoned in the Netherlands, but his specter looms large and heavy over these midterms, through his proxies led by his daughter, VP Sara and their “DuterTEN” team (now more like DuterTWELVE, if you add one Marcos and one Villar). Sara was all set to be impeached for grave threats against the First Family and grand theft Piattos—which would not only have taken her out as VP but disqualified her from running for President in 2028. But that procedure—needing at least 16 votes in the Senate—got kicked down the road, after the election, leaving Sara’s fate up to the newly reconstituted Senate to seal.

So again, I told my friend, presuming that the BBM administration’s game plan here is to freeze Sara out of the presidency so it can install its own man, 2025 is really all about 2028. It’s a referendum, sure—not so much about the present President, but rather the past and maybe the future one. We’re not just—or not even—voting necessarily for the best candidates, but for senators who will push Sara out, or keep her in. Daddy Digong’s summary extradition to the ICC, while a relief for many, merely intensified that drama, raising the stakes to a matter of survival for the Dutertes.

It’s another sad and sorry spot to be in, for these elections to come down to choosing among the lesser or the least of 8, or 16, or 24 evils, against the statistical near-certainty of another wipeout for the truly good. Should I support this fairly familiar trapo, the devil I know, over that manifest idiot, just to help ensure that the latter stays out? Or, again, should I simply disregard all the surveys and scenarios, and vote from my purest and most innocent of hearts for the best people on that ballot? (Was this how the cardinals chose Pope Leo XIV, or did more pragmatic considerations come into play?)

By the time you read this, I shall have cast an early vote as a senior in my barangay. Like we often say, we are whom we vote for, and there’s a part of me that fears what I’ve become or may have to be. I need some of that Holy Spirit with me today—we all will.

Qwertyman No. 141: Purity and Perfection

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Qwertyman for Monday, April 14, 2025

LAST WEEK, former Commission on Audit Commissioner and senatorial candidate Heidi Mendoza—a staunch exponent of good governance and nemesis of crooks—drew flak from some people who would have been her natural allies on the liberal side of the political spectrum: the LGBTQ community. At issue was her expressed disagreement with same-sex marriage, as a personal belief she did not seek to impose on anyone else. That still wasn’t enough for some same-sex marriage advocates, who announced their withdrawal of their support for her candidacy.

Of course both Heidi and her detractors have a right to their opinions, but I can’t help thinking that the only people chuckling at this situation are avatars of neither good governance nor gender rights, but the enemies of both.

Heidi Mendoza hasn’t been alone in this position of being seen to have been right on many things but wrong on—well, something, but something big enough to destroy and erase whatever good they’d done before. “Being seen” is important here, because it’s a matter of perception; like beauty, “wrongness” is in the eyes of the beholder. 

Today’s social media is populated by such beholders who can’t wait to see personalities make what they deem to be mistakes, and often to point those out with all the hawkish attentiveness of dancesport judges and the ruthless certitude of Pharisees. 

I’m sure you’ve come across many more such instances of people whom you thought you knew and whose ideas you had largely agreed with, only to find them—suddenly one morning—the object of the nastiest vitriol the Internet can be capable of dishing. Once blood is spotted in the water, the sharks start circling and a feeding frenzy follows. Many comments simply echo the previous one, seeking to be even louder and crueler; little attention is paid to context and nuance.

Witness what has happened just these past few weeks:

A political scientist and commentator who had grown a substantial following for his liberal positions got skewered for comparing Mindanao to sub-Saharan Africa. Never mind his explanatory reference to a scholarly study which made that comparison based on certain criteria. In the verbal shorthand of a TV interview, the soundbite was all that mattered to many.

An expert on infectious diseases—globally recognized in that field—was savaged for opining that former President Rodrigo Duterte should have been tried by a Philippine court instead of being bundled off to The Hague. Never mind that the good doctor made it clear that he was against EJK and all the wrongs that the old man is now in the dock for. Netizens seemed to take it against him that he tried to explain how many Mindanawons felt about Duterte, and that he had worked under that administration to help stop Covid during the pandemic.

A prominent journalist and exponent of ethical journalism—also a fervent convert to evangelical Christianity—upset and lost many friends when he declared his disagreement with the idea of transgender athletes competing with their biological counterparts. (It was a view shared by a former student of mine, a lawyer and legal scholar of the same religious persuasion.) This man’s longstanding commitment to the truth and to justice seemed trivial compared to what he had to say on this one issue.

No doubt these issues are centrally important to some, the litmus test by which they judge people’s character and their “true colors.” But which color is truly “true”—the mass of blue or the spot of yellow? And what effect does single-issue politics have on the big picture?

I wonder what all those Arab-Americans who withheld their vote for Kamala Harris because she didn’t sound pro-Palestinian enough are thinking now that the man they effectively helped return to power is speaking unabashedly about Gaza as “an incredible piece of real estate.” I know that some continue to insist that they did the right thing in holding on to the one issue that mattered to them, and of course it was their right to do so. But I can’t help thinking of all those Fil-Ams who trumpeted the Orange Guy’s alleged support for the rights of the unborn, in disregard of all the pain and misery he’s causing to the born. 

Me, I’m as liberal as they come, with all of that word’s pitfalls and contradictions. I believe in civil liberties and human rights, in free speech, in freedom from censorship, in the equal application of the law for all. I also support divorce, same-sex marriage, abortion rights, transgender rights, and gun control. I stand neither with Zionists nor Hamas but for peace for the people of Israel and Palestine. I believe in and pray to God—a God who is good and just—but mistrust organized religion and both extreme Right and Left (indeed, anyone who claims to know how life should be lived) and resist doctrine of any kind, whether Church, State, or Party. If you’re my FB friend and you find any of these too reprehensible for comfort, feel free to unfriend me, or to stop reading this column. 

I have to admit that, following major upheavals like the 2022 election and the Duterte arrest, I’ve lightened my roster of Facebook friends by offloading a number of characters whose preferences I loathed. I didn’t have any qualms about that, because they were “friends” only in the shallowest Facebook sense of the word. (I find Facebook useful, but blame it for its degradation and devaluation of “friendship.”) Most had never interacted with me, and neither of us would miss the other.

But there are friends you have in real life who are arguably worth more than their politics or religion. By this I don’t mean that they fatten your bank account or make your life easier (although some might); if anything, they remind us how much more complicated people and life can be, and how ideological purity or moral perfection may ultimately be less important (and certainly more boring) than the challenge of finding some common ground and surviving together. In continuing to talk with them, we talk with ourselves and those parts of us still capable of doubt and wonder. 

So disagree as I may with her on this particular point, I’m voting for Heidi Mendoza. I suspect I stand a better chance of convincing her to support same-sex marriage than of straightening out the crooks and dimwits eager to take her place in our already benighted Senate.

Qwertyman No. 139: Filipinos for Nothing

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Qwertyman for Monday, March 31, 2025

THERE’S A part of me that wants to stop beating up on the Dutertes, lest I be accused of being part of the Marcos propaganda machine (which stands to benefit from all this anyway, whatever I say), but like the gift that keeps on giving, the D’s and their people just won’t let me let them be. Being no lawyer, I’ll have nothing to say on the legality or otherwise of the former President’s arrest and forced departure for the Netherlands—except to opine, as others have, that justice sometimes works in mysterious ways.

My beef for this week is how the Duterte Agitprop Department (let’s call it DAD, like Elon Musk’s DOGE) has spun the whole ICC affair in the public sphere. These days, you never expect people to stand on the truth and nothing but the truth in these political matters. But you do hope for s0me degree of sophistication, for the kind of professional finesse that will justify the multimillions that any PR crew tasked with saving Rodrigo Duterte’s skin—or barring that, at least his reputation—will have been budgeted.

There are three propositions by the Duterte camp that I want to focus on, among many others that have arisen since the arrest.

First, his supposed global allies and endorsers. 

Donald Trump, for example, reportedly took precious time out from dismantling American democracy to declare that “We will protect Rodrigo and the Filipino people from the oppression you are facing…. I and the United States will not allow any of our allies and friends to suffer, and we will impose sanctions against the Marcos Administration for the unlawful act they did.” Why, he had even called Xi Jinping—not about tariffs, not about Taiwan, not about American forces in the Philippines—but about the “serious matter concerning our good friend Rodrigo.” For his part, Xi Jinping—who on a state visit to Manila did say “Our relations have now seen a rainbow after the rain” in response to Duterte’s more prosaic “I simply love Xi Jinping!”—supposedly brought up the Duterte arrest and the ICC in his opening address to the Boao Forum for Asia. Not to be outdone, another Duterte hero, Vladimir Putin, was reported to have threatened (someone—not specified) with “grave consequences” for Duterte’s arrest, as it violated the Rome Statute (which Russia incidentally pulled out of in 2016).

It’s all good when a national leader of superlative virtue and achievement has been so badly wronged that the world takes notice and his peers rise up in alarm to protest the injustice. But really—Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin, all of them prime candidates for the ICC’s hospitality (Putin already is, along with Benjamin Netanyahu)? Never mind that all these supposed endorsements turned out to be fake; they still elicited applause from the DDS faithful, which I suppose was the intended effect. Q: Would it have been too much to expect an endorsement from the likes of Pope Francis? A: Yes.

Second, that call for OFWs to stop remitting their earnings home in a “Zero-Remittance Week” protest.

Our overseas workers contributed nearly $40 billion to the Philippine economy last year, so someone at DAD must have figured it would be brilliant to prick that bubble in the name of remitting Duterte home. But yet again, really? 

Granted, PRRD created the Department of Migrant Workers and the OFW Bank, and brought home hundreds of thousands of OFWs during the pandemic. Former OWWA chief Hans Cacdac even called him “the father of OFWs.” I don’t doubt that the Duterte name has a lot of traction in our expatriate communities, and that flexing a bit of their economic power in a week-long protest will ring some alarm bells, but you might as well ask people to chop off a finger to prove their fealty. For how long do you imagine will Pinoys postpone housing amortizations, tuition payments, maintenance meds, and grocery expenses to protest even the crucifixion of Jesus Christ?

Lastly, and perhaps closest to my propagandist’s heart, there’s that inexplicably vague “I am not a Filipino for nothing” slogan.

Sure, it sounds brave and bold—like it actually says and means something. But does it, really? I’ve been turning the statement around and around in my head and maybe I’m extraordinarily dense and unreceptive but I just don’t get it. In rhetoric, double negatives are often used to suggest or even emphasize the opposite (the technical term is “litotes,” as in “That’s not a bad idea” or “She’s hardly destitute”). 

Rarely do double negatives make good copy for T-shirts and streamers, if you want to rally the masses. Well, there was Winston Churchill’s “We shall never surrender” (arguably a double negative) speech on the occasion of the Battle of Britain in June 1940, but that statement was preceded by a string of powerful positives: “We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall never surrender.”

Ninoy Aquino—who must be rolling in his grave at being compared to Digong Duterte—famously said “The Filipino is worth dying for,” a slogan ironically made all the more resonant by the fact that it turned out to be self-fulfilling. I doubt that Duterte will carry his emulation to that extreme, but he or his handlers can learn from its clarity and brevity, which contribute to its emotional appeal. “I am not a Filipino for nothing” means, well, nothing. It says nothing about freedom, justice, peace, love, patriotism, godliness, courage, or integrity—none of the grand ideals and ideas that our heroes exemplified. Might it be because these notions were never really associated with a president whom we best remember for his crude expletives and constant exhortations to kill? 

“Sampalin ang ICC!” sounds much more honestly him. It still sounds lame, especially given where he is right now, but it seems more purposeful, and should look good on a green T-shirt.

Qwertyman No. 138: Dutch Entertainment

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Qwertyman for Monday, March 24, 2025

AS I’VE mentioned here before, I was a prisoner once—under martial law, for more than seven months, when I was eighteen. I had been arrested without a warrant for unspecified offenses against the State, on the strength of an Arrest, Search, and Seizure Order (ASSO) issued by Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile. ASSOs were literally a catch-all piece of paper, meant to capture anyone whose face the regime didn’t like. I was sleeping at home when military agents barged in, and scooped me up in front of my terrified parents.

Our prison stood on a patch of land where the upscale BGC stands now; when we looked out at night we could see the neon lights of Guadalupe flashing. We had a small library in the back, TV in the mess hall, chess, calisthenics, and rumor-mongering for entertainment. It wasn’t too bad when there were just 40 of us occupying two Army barracks in the early months of martial law, but when we grew to over 200, the harsh realities of prison life set in, and people began escaping through the barbed wire.

These recollections came back to me last week as I thought about the surprise arrest and deportation of former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte to a holding cell in the Netherlands while awaiting trial by the International Criminal Court.

By any legal reckoning, he’s going to be there for a while—he won’t be arraigned until September—so like it or not he’s going to have to adjust to his new abode over the next few months, like we had to in Bicutan.

His subalterns and supporters can make all the noise they want outside his prison, in the Philippines, and wherever in the world a DDS chapter exists, but RRD’s time ahead in Scheveningen will be largely spent in quiet and solitude.

From what we’ve seen online of his holding cell, Digong’s digs aren’t plush by any standard, but seem fairly adequate and comfortable—just spare enough to suggest to its occupant that he is in some kind of retreat, where he can ponder his worldly actions and contemplate the afterlife. Indeed the room—with its military cot and washbasin—evokes priestly economy, in stark contrast to the sybaritic excesses its previous tenants must have been accustomed to in their prime. In fairness to the incumbent, that lifestyle is something he has never been associated with; part of his popular appeal stems from his image as a man used to sleeping on hard beds and dining on the simplest fare.

There is a large flat-screen TV in the room, through which Digong can follow the news of the world and—given the way that world is going—feel upheld in his conviction that a hard fist and a knock on the head always makes things right. His heroes—Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping (notably the same despots “quoted” by his trolls as expressing their support for him, like character references)—seem to be doing all right, keeping the world safe from the rule of law.

He might learn that the Dutch music industry is undergoing a boom on the strength of songs like “Anxiety” by Doechii and “Guilty” by Teddy Swims. Football, tennis, and golf are the favorite sports of the Dutch, although Digong might also be amused by a Frisian sport called klootschieten, which involves throwing a ball and sometimes drawing blood. Dutch cinema is a small industry, but The Punisher should still be thrilled by local crime classics like “Murder Story” (1989), “Gangsterboys” (2010), and “Accused” (2014).

Should RRD prefer interesting human conversation, I doubt he’s going to get it from the likes of Harry Roque, whose own tribulations must be coming out of Digong’s ears (“I want to go home, and you want to come here?”). If there are any CPP-NDF holdouts left in Utrecht, I’m sure they’ll have  a lot to talk about on a prison visit, going back to the Left’s early flirtation with their “nationalist” ally.

But truth to tell, if I were the former President, I would spend my time in Scheveningen writing my memoirs. I wrote a novel about my government-sponsored Airbnb experience, but given his bluntness, fiction probably won’t be RRD’s best suit.

I suspect Digong is a lot more articulate and maybe even more urbane than he lets on, because no Chief Executive could possibly be that vulgar and that ill-mannered without it being an act (you can imagine him rehearsing those PI’s before the SONA and turning up his collar to look even more roguish). All his life, he has presented himself to be a man of menace, projecting unforgiving brutality, steeping his hands into a cauldron of boiling blood to strike fear into his foes—but couldn’t all that have been just a show in the name of, uhm, good governance? 

The alternative narrative could go thus: In truth and deep at heart, all by his lonesome in his corner of the darkened Palace, he may have been a sensitive and tortured soul whose conscience reared and roared with every fresh report of another tokhang victim, who felt the anguish of every wife and mother like a stab to his own tender heart. He had done what he had to do for the noblest of purposes—the salvation of his suffering people from the stupor of narcotics (about which he knew something himself, but it was only to ease the pain from a motoring accident—all other uses were criminal).

RRD’s memoirs would not only be a spirited defense of his life—an apologia pro vita sua, as they used to be called—but a full, tell-all accounting of everything everyone ever did: henchmen, enemies, beneficiaries, and erstwhile allies alike. If he says he can’t get justice at the Hague, then at least he can dispense some of it from the safety of his albeit involuntary confinement.

Now that would not only be edifying but entertaining, wouldn’t it?

Qwertyman No. 137: ICC Ex Machina

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Qwertyman for Monday, March 17, 2025

IN PLAYWRITING and fiction, we call it deus ex machina—literally, the “god out of the machine”—which has come to mean a miraculously happy or fortuitous ending to a long and agonizing drama. 

You’ll find it, for example, when a virginal heroine—beleaguered by dirty old men and rapacious creditors—seems on the brink of yielding her precious virtue, tearfully praying on her knees for deliverance, when a kindly lawyer comes knocking on her door to announce that a distant uncle has passed away, leaving her his fortune. We rejoice with her—despite feeling, at the same time, that divine intervention came a bit too conveniently. This is why I admonish my students to refrain from employing deus ex machina in their stories, because in today’s hard-bitten and cynical world, nobody really believes in it anymore, and readers simply feel deprived of a more rational ending.

Like many things we know about drama, the idea goes back to the ancient Greeks, whose playwrights used it to great effect, Aeschylus and Euripides among them. Euripides most memorably turned to deus ex machina in Medea, where the title character—having been cheated on by her husband Jason—kills Jason’s mistress and their own two children. Guilty both of murder and infanticide, Medea seems hopeless and bound for damnation—until a machine, actually a crane shaped like a chariot drawn by dragons, emerges from behind the stage. It has been sent by Medea’s grandfather, the sun-god Helios, to pluck Medea away from her husband and from the coils of human justice and deliver her to the safety of Athens.

Was it fair of the gods to save Medea from the punishment awaiting her on earth? It’s arguable, but more than a device to resolve a messy plot, the “god out of the machine” was meant to remind the Athenian audience that a higher order of justice obtained, and that when humanity became too entangled in its own predicaments, then it was time for the gods to take over.

A lot of this swept through my mind last week as the drama of Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest and express delivery to the International Criminal Court at the Hague played out on TV and social media. Had the gods come out of the machine to impose divine justice? It had seemed nearly impossible a few years ago, when Digong was still flaunting his untouchability and taunting the ICC to come and get him. Well, we all know what happened since then—and they did. 

We understand just as well that the Marcos administration performed this operation not out of some abounding sense of justice or because it had suddenly acquired a conscience and realized the evil with which it had “uniteamed” to electoral victory in 2022. “We did what we had to do,” President Marcos Jr. explained on TV, with deadpan truthfulness—referring superficially to the Philippines’ obligation to honor its commitment to Interpol, but subtextually to the irresistible opportunity to cripple someone who had become a political arch-enemy, and providentially gain the support of masses of people harmed and disaffected by Duterte’s butchery.

The outswelling of that support—at least for Digong’s arrest and deportation—was spontaneous and sincere. Not since the Marcoses’ departure at EDSA had I felt such relief and exhilaration—and surely the irony would not have been lost on BBM, who knows what it was like to leave on a jetplane, kicking and dragging, for an uncertain future.

And what I say next may go against the grain of everything I have said and thought about the Marcoses, but no matter what ulterior motives may have come into play in this episode of the Duterte-ICC saga, I feel thankful for the resolve and the dispatch that BBM showed in this instance. Along with his administration’s resistance to Chinese aggression in the West Philippine Sea, this will be certain to count among his most positive achievements. 

The great difference between this drama and Medea, as an example of deus ex machina, is that the intervention of the ICC (with BBM helpfully providing the crane) isn’t going to save Duterte, but rather the people whom his presidency soaked in blood. But as with Medea, the “gods” step in when local justice proves impotent or inadequate (and did anyone really believe that Duterte would be hauled before and convicted in a Philippine court of law, when even the Maguindanao Massacre took a full decade to produce convictions for the principals?).

The question now is what next—not for The Great Punisher, for whom a prolonged trial at a cushy court will not be punishment enough, but for the Marcos administration, which suddenly finds itself with more political capital at its disposal, and yet also put itself at greater risk? Surely it must also realize that it not only has committed itself to tearing down the entire House of Duterte and confronting the many millions of voters they still represent, but that it has also set itself up for higher expectations, on pain of suffering the same ignominious fate?

In the hopeful bit of theater playing in my mind, I imagine BBM parlaying the bonus of goodwill he has earned from this maneuver into a broader if not genuine resolution to distance himself further from his predecessor and create a freer and more just society. There are clear and immediate steps he can take in this direction. The first gesture would be the release of all remaining political prisoners, followed by the abolition of the NTF-ELCAC, which no longer serves any useful purpose (not that it ever did). He can root out and punish the enablers and perpetrators of Oplan Tokhang and eliminate oppression and corruption from the mindset of Philippine law enforcement. And then he can begin reforming Philippine governance, starting with the quality of the people he seeks to bring to power—senators, congressmen, and the like.

But then that would be the ultimate deus ex machina, and we have been shaped by experience into a stubbornly disbelieving lot.