Vice President Sara Duterte’s announcement of her presidential run in 2028 was hardly unexpected. She has been projected as front-runner; her approval ratings stay strong despite her questioned disbursement of P612 million in confidential funds taken from taxpayer money. The continuing absence of explanation for the disbursement is again in prime spot among the burning issues making up the impeachment complaints filed against her in the House of Representatives.

The Veep made the announcement in a period marked by unfinished business. The corruption scandal involving flood control and other infra projects remains distant from resolution, and major perps are nowhere near promised prison cells. The confirmation of charges against her father Rodrigo Duterte in connection with his “war on drugs” is finally to begin in The Hague. The complaints for her impeachment — a fourth was filed and endorsed mere hours after her announcement — are yet subject to determination in form and substance.

Still, predictable or not, news of her planned run for the top post set off certain curious scenarios. For one, it was seen as a show of force and a warning to House members vis-a-vis her impeachment — a perceived demand for fealty on the disturbing assumption of a sure win in 2028, as though all Filipino lawmakers and voters were unqualifiedly stupid and unable to comprehend culpability and accountability.

‘Ready’ 

For another, Sen. Robin Padilla has expressed eagerness to serve as her running mate — if “Digong” just says the word — having been, he said, born “ready” for high responsibility, and the vice presidency being, in his estimation, not too much of a big deal: “Hindi naman masyadong ano yan,” he was heard saying eloquently of the post currently occupied by Digong’s daughter, “puro advocacy lang yan, parang ikaw ang spare tire.” 

“Di ba?” the man added, as though seeking affirmation from the fan base that put him at the top of the 2022 senatorial race. It would be a cinch for him, he pronounced, no sweat: “Kayang kaya yan.”

Yet he had earlier charmed the President’s estranged manang with his blarney that “it’s time” for Filipinos to experience “girl power” in the form of a Sara-Imee tandem. In TV footage, Sen. Imee Marcos, the cellar dweller in the 2025 midterm “Magic 12,” appeared thrilled and quite willing to go along with the prospect.

This is what’s hogging attention these days as public suffering peaks anew, with the shear line triggering floods and landslides in Mindanao, the Bicol region, and elsewhere, resulting in death, displacement, and destruction. Political pundits are parsing the Veep’s announcement and talking strategy, image-building and chess moves. Meanwhile, the cost of diesel prepares to climb for the eighth consecutive week. And leaders of organized jeepney operators and drivers are lamenting the fact that, even with the flood-control corruption shown to involve the plunder of public coffers in the billions of pesos, the government is loath to approve a P1 fare increase.

Irony

To those paying sufficient attention, sharp irony is heckling the body politic. From the siga ex-prez claiming a condition too frail to withstand the International Criminal Court’s hearings on the confirmation of charges against him (to start on Feb. 23), to the siga ex-con-turned-sen claiming competence to be veep (a position, it must be said, that Leni Robredo once held with distinction and dignity despite oppression by the ruling party). 

Padilla feels badgered by those who allude to his past. But it’s on record for the information of those too young to know or old enough to forget: Robin C. Padilla was convicted of illegal possession of firearms by the Angeles City Regional Trial Court in 1994 and sentenced to a prison term of 17-21 years. He was eventually pardoned by presidents: conditionally by Fidel V. Ramos in 1998 when he was doing time at the New Bilibid Prison, and fully by Rodrigo Duterte in 2016.

There’s irony, too, in the Vice President’s offer of her life and service to the Filipino people as potential president, and her determined refusal to account for hundreds of millions of pesos in funds that, at one time, when she concurrently held the education portfolio, could have been used to help avert the staggering learning poverty afflicting Filipino children.

As well, there’s irony in Sen. Bong Go’s call for fairness and impartiality when it was made known that the ICC had named him among the “co-perpetrators” of Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs.” It’s fairly easy to recall his ubiquity not only in the then mayor’s office and household in Davao City but also in the Palace starting in 2016, including his (quite unseemly) presence at the then president’s weekly televised sessions even when he was officially no longer “special assistant” and already a senator of the realm. (It was in one of those sessions that the then president, complete with a dismissive gesture, declared the 2016 arbitral ruling upholding the Philippines’ sovereign rights in the West Philippine Sea “a piece of paper meant for the trash bin.”)

Related: Senators Go and Dela Rosa named among Duterte’s ‘co-perpetrators’

‘Constitutional duty’

In the House, Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro has declared her committee on justice primed to deliberate on the form and substance of the impeachment complaints against the Vice President when these are referred to it. The window of reference is no longer too wide, according to the recent ruling of the Supreme Court on session days. 

Nevertheless, Luistro has pointed out, correctly, that the committee members’ leanings are immaterial in view of their “constitutional duty” to address the complaints. “Regardless of the consequences of the pronouncement of our Vice President about her intention to run [for president in 2028], the deliberation of the justice committee should not be affected,” Luistro said in a report by the Inquirer.

The justice committee voted only recently to dismiss two impeachment complaints against the President for insufficiency in substance. 

So much to look forward to in these times of reckoning. At the recent inurnment of the ashes of five more victims of extrajudicial killings during Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, Dambana ng Paghilom convener Fr. Flavie Villanueva spoke to the bereaved families of the true paghilom (healing) that justice brings. 

And looking back is equally imperative. In the not too distant past, after a verified impeachment complaint against Sara Duterte had been sent by the House to the Senate for trial, then Representative-elect Leila de Lima expressed concern about the delay in the convening of the impeachment court. The attentive observer will recall that Sen. Jinggoy Estrada assailed De Lima for “grandstanding“ and said pointedly that he and his colleagues would perform their constitutional duty. 

The Senate under Chiz Escudero’s presidency eventually voted to remand the complaint back to the House, and the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Duterte’s impeachment was unconstitutional. CS

Read more: Collective calls for accountability on various fronts mark February