Susan’s Notes
By Susan Palmes-Dennis
ROCKINGHAM, North Carolina—I’ve been quite busy for the past month or so taking care of my daughter and her family who arrived here for a much deserved vacation but that didn’t mean I was not keeping tabs on what’s happening in my country of birth for sometime.
And as usual, there’s more bad news than usual in the Philippines which is beset by another political crisis in the form of Vice President Sara Duterte Carpio’s looming impeachment trial. Last I heard, the actual voting by the House of Representatives to elevate the articles of impeachment is said to be scheduled on May 11 or maybe even earlier.
In my social media feed, I’ve read Facebook posts of local media colleagues ventilating their respective stances for or against the impeachment. One even went so far as to write an open letter addressed to some local lawmakers that appealed to them to vote against the impeachment principally for the reason that it’s not a priority for the country which is overburdened as always with more critical problems such as the energy crisis and corruption by other officials not by Sara or her political allies and sympathizers.
And there are others who are adamant that the impeachment is a priority and should be pursued to its logical conclusion which is the ouster of Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio due to the severity of the charges against her which were given more weight with the discovery of billions of pesos in her account as disclosed by the country’s Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC). Like the others, I’m not in favor of the impeachment but for different reasons.
Ever since the late former Chief Justice Renato Corona was impeached by the Senate back in 2012, the impeachment process became a political weapon wielded by the ruling administration. The late senator Joker Arroyo precisely warned about this during the final pronouncement of the Senate’s ruling on Corona, calling it a ‘dangerous precedent.’ Arroyo’s warning went unheeded of course as is every lesson brought by political upheavals in the country like the two Edsa Revolutions.
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Impeachment in the Philippine political setting got its start when then House Speaker Manny Villar elevated the articles of impeachment against former president Joseph Estrada despite the very loud vocal objections of Estrada’s congressional allies in the background. And the rest of that tale is history whose chapter ended with Edsa Revolution Part 2 and Erap’s ignominous exit straight back to his home city of San Juan.
The beneficiary of that impeachment, former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, then staved off numerous attempts to impeach her following the now infamous ‘Hello Garci’ scandal under the guise of having political washed up wannabes like Oliver Lozano file highly flawed impeachment complaints that were immediately rejected by Congress. As most anyone knows by now, a one year ban ensues every time an impeachment complaint against an elected public official is rejected or entertained regardless of its severity.
GMA wasn’t the only official that was targeted for impeachment. Also targeted were then Chief Justice Hilario Davide but it fizzled out at the Lower House and former ombudsman Merceditas Guttierrez, who resigned just as the Lower House elevated the articles of impeachment against her in the Senate back in 2011 or a year before the Corona impeachment. Oh right, Sara’s father former president Rodrigo Duterte also had former chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno impeached during his presidency from 2016 to 2022.
Now the political fortunes of both father and daughter Duterte had gone sour with the elder Duterte now being tried for alleged crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, the Netherlands and Vice President Sara staring right in the barrel of an impeachment trial aimed squarely at her by the Lower House or more specifically, by congressional allies identified with her political arch nemesis, former House Speaker Martin Romualdez.
Regardless of President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr’s pronouncements that didn’t favor Sara’s impeachment, political developments on the ground speak otherwise and to Duterte sympathizers who are admittedly quite legion in number, rhetoric doesn’t match with action which is largely propelled towards ousting Sara not just out of the vice presidency but out of the 2028 presidential race.
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LIke I said, I’m not in favor of impeaching Sara because it would only politically polarize the country even further than it already needs to be. Granted that this political toxicity is fed by and aggravated by a lot of players in the political landscape and not just the Marcos and Duterte camps. And such political noise are to be expected in democracies around the world like here in the US.
Still, I also have my own reservations about Sara who I don’t acts like a statesperson should be. And it certainly doesn’t help that one of the grounds in the filing of the impeachment complaint against her was her alleged threat caught in video which claimed that someone is out to kill President Marcos and his family should, God forbid, anything would happen to her.
As a sitting vice president, Sara should nevertheless be reminded time and again that she should refrain from acting more like her father—who was during his presidency freely threatening and issuing insults to his political enemies and criminal suspects—and start being more tactful without losing her courage and intelligence towards rivals and foes alike. That she’s dodging invitations to appear before the House Committee on Justice also doesn’t help her cause.
That she’s acting like her father when it comes to dealing with political foes and anyone who dares cross her path is evidenced in that now infamous video of her as then former Davao City mayor pummeling a court sheriff tasked with enforcing a court ordered demolition in one of that city’s slum areas. I dread what she would do if and when she does get elected as the next Philippine president in 2028, barring any derailment in her campaign for the presidency.
One cannot also discount the groundswell of sympathy that Sara would get if, like Guttierrez, she resigns from her post before she gets tried for impeachment at the Senate. Or if anything happens to her father while he’s undergoing the ICC trial. For now, there is a larger than usual political tension caused by the ongoing impeachment against Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio and as a Filipino, I watch with bated interest on what happens in the next few weeks.
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