Manila ——The conventional army will lose if it cannot win. If the guerrillas don't lose, they win. Stripped of power and access to all key institutions of the country, the Duterte dynasty was forced to wage a guerrilla war against the Marcos government.
Over the past year, the once invincible Duterte has gradually been reduced to a ragtag group of “destabilizers” after being purged from all key government positions. Months of congressional hearings have exposed various anomalies in Duterte’s governance style, while the Justice Department and the National Bureau of Investigation have threatened to bring serious criminal charges against key members of the Duterte family. To make matters worse, the Duterte family's support and popularity began to decline, with Vice President Sara Duterte's net approval rating at just over 20% in the fourth quarter of last year's Pulse Asia survey.
Sara Duterte even faces the serious threat of impeachment, which would permanently disqualify her from running for office. So far, however, the notorious family has prevailed by Kissinger's standards. Various communication missteps by the younger Marcos administration and the controversy surrounding an unprecedented $109 billion state budget gave the Duterte family a second life.
On the one hand, some genuine members of the opposition have unwittingly become tools of Duterte’s machinations as they focus specifically on real and perceived anomalies in the government’s new budget. The pro-Duterte camp is eager to take advantage of the situation, launching a propaganda offensive that, among other things, portrays itself as the victim of a “witch hunt” by an allegedly extremely corrupt government.
Duterte's line basically went like this: “Why did Sara Duterte obsess over 'millions' of confidential funds during her tenure at the Department of Education while 'billions' were corrupted by our opponents?” In short, the pro-Duterte camp believes that even if the allegations of anomalies are true, their actions amount to nothing more than petty indiscretions compared to the massive theft of public funds by their enemies — paraphrasing Sara Duterte In other words, it is “napakaliit”.
However, if well-intentioned good governance advocates proactively call out the Duterte family’s hypocrisy and lack of moral authority, and proactively remind the public of the billions of perverse transactions that occurred during Duterte’s presidency, especially at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic Expect. Remember the pharmacy scandal? Is Ministry of Health expenditure abnormal? Oh, let’s not forget that China’s offshore gaming companies, under the previous administration, brought billions of “dirty money” into the country in the most secretive of circumstances? The list is long.
Not to mention, the Duterte family enjoyed billions in secret funding during their decades of uninterrupted rule in one of the country’s largest cities. As former deputy judge Antonio Carpio, a Davao native, has repeatedly pointed out, the Duterte family virtually “invented” the “confidential fund” phenomenon that has been the cornerstone of their power since they first took over Davao City.
The Duterte family has also unabashedly adopted the whole “people power” slogan, even though the pro-Duterte camp is the biggest detractor of the EDSA People Power uprising and its ultimate hero, Ninoy Aquino. Note that a major religious group aligned with the Duterte family is even preparing to launch its own massive “peace rally” in a clear show of force against opponents of the notorious dynasty.
However, the ultimate fault lies with the ruling government. Whether due to character confidence or political caution, Mr. Marcos repeatedly failed to seize the moment. Worse, his refusal to rein in the allegedly questionable financial behavior of his legislative allies ahead of the 2025 elections has given the Duterte family a perfect opportunity to distract the public and hijack the real opposition. Some Marcos supporters believe they can suppress Duterte after the midterm elections and/or adopt a containment strategy that will keep the notorious dynasty on its toes for the foreseeable future. What they tend to forget is that the Duterte family is just one step away from taking back Malacañang Palace, and Sara Duterte remains the top contender in the 2028 presidential election. The Duterte family has made it clear that they will exact unfathomable revenge on all their enemies if they return to power!
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