She is a PR person’s nightmare at the very least. I can imagine her handlers in a state of wild confusion as they try to do some damage control every time Vice President Sara Duterte utters anything remotely resembling a coherent sentence.

She is remembered as the barumbada (sadly, I can’t find a word in English to approximate its meaning) mayora from Davao who pummeled a local official who didn’t follow her orders in front of a video camera and several witnesses. She made the six o’clock news, but was there a public apology for such brutish behavior? Nah.

Apparently, she built on that reputation as a no-nonsense local executive who will brook no nonsense were she to be elected to the second highest office in the land. This “common touch” may have endeared her to those voters in May 2022 who like their candidates feisty.

But at the height of Typhoon “Carina” early in August, she insensitively pushed through with a leisure trip to Germany. (Who knows? She may have snuck in at the Paris Olympics, but this remains to be proven.) Was she pushing some Filipino talent in Deutschland? That could be a suitable rationale, but no, she is said to have brought her family with her to watch American pop idol Taylor Swift’s concert.

Gosh! Doesn’t she even realize the sacrifices that Filipino musicians, pop, jazz or classical, go through to barely make it? This is not to praise President Marcos Jr. on his occasional patronage of local classical musicians, but as the former education secretary, she is expected some show of support for our artists, the country’s best ambassadors.

And then came the Ang Kaibigan children’s book fiasco. We have to acknowledge Sen. Risa Hontiveros for her sober and determined questioning of the novice author who couldn’t even give a synopsis of the short text during the hearing on her office’s proposed budget. The honorable senator looked, to use a term picked up in social media, “pisstified” because no logical answers were forthcoming from the Vice President. (“Pisstified” means pissed off and mystified at the same time.)

As the days wore on, the public following how the VP unraveled was even more astonished that the book’s plot and characters may have been possibly plagiarized from a Scholastic Books title. New York-based novelist Ninotchka Rosca was the first to call this out in a Facebook post. More Facebook users like National Artist Virgilio Almario trotted out page by page evidence showing the uncanny similarity of Duterte’s book and the Scholastic title.

Still, the VP is saying the similarity is just coincidental and hers is an original creative work. My foot! as my late hotelier friend Heiner Maulbecker would say when faced with BS from public officials.

Writers and authors came out hurt and insulted, decrying how difficult it is to even write, much more to write a children’s story, and get the work published, marketed and distributed to schools. And here is Duterte’s P10-million book with the author’s photo in her trademark green terno at the back, possibly thinking she could fool the public that she seems to have little regard for.

Before heads could cool over this book faux pas, there she was again, facing the House of Representatives this time for her proposed Office of the Vice President budget. She became an overnight meme with her funny English pronunciation of the phrase “She may not…,” repeatedly saying “Shimenet” while those watching the live video streamed on their TV and computer screens doubled over in laughter.

I’ve always believed that arrogant government officials would someday meet their comeuppance, and it will be in the form of mass ridicule. Now if laughter can only boot the underserving and unqualified out of office, I will be thankful that there is a modicum of justice in this world.

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