The once-formidable UniTeam continues to implode, providing circus-like spectacle as the country tries to get back on its feet after the devastation wrought by an unusual cluster of weather disturbances. 

In a virtual presser that began shortly before 1 a.m. Saturday in the House of Representatives, an enraged Vice President Sara Duterte unleashed startling words of murder, naming President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his wife Liza Araneta Marcos, and Speaker Martin Romualdez as sure targets of an assassin if, she said, she gets killed. The moment was intense—no turning back from it, no undoing it—leaving viewers agape and Malacanang later pronouncing her words as “an active threat.”

Earlier in the presser, the lawyer Zuleika Lopez declared, weeping: “I have rights. I am not an accused.” The scene was her detention room at the House. She was angry and distraught, a leap from her calm demeanor on Thursday at the inquiry being conducted by the committee on good government and public accountability into the confidential funds received and spent in recent years by the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education.

Here is what could be gathered from the tearful account of Sara Duterte’s chief of staff: It was late, she and her assistant were preparing for bed. Suddenly some people came into the room, which was locked from the outside. They were frightened. The unexpected visitors, about nine in all, male and female, wanted to read a document to her. What is that? she said she asked. Who are you? What are you doing here? It turned out that they were under instruction to transfer her to the Women’s Correctional. Shocked, she refused: I’m not moving. I’m staying here. She said she pushed them away, out of the room, and, despite a chronic back ache, pushed a bed—pointing it out to reporters in the dim light—against the door.

‘Just a government employee’

Long story short, Zuleika Lopez was aghast that she, “just a government employee doing my best,” was told, in the dead of night, in her pajamas, that she was to be transferred from her designated “space” in the House detention center to the women’s prison in Mandaluyong City. “I have rights,” she kept saying, wiping her eyes. “Wala na bang batas (Are there no more laws here)?” 

For one wild moment, the attentive observer was moved to imagine a scene from the days of “one time, big time” during Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal “war on drugs,” when state forces descended on sleeping households and swiftly, ruthlessly, produced widows and orphans.

Sara Duterte, claiming to stand as legal counsel to her chief of staff cited in contempt and detained for urging the Commission on Audit not to release pertinent records to the investigating committee, blocked the transfer. She later said the order to transfer Lopez to the women’s prison, signed by the committee chair Rep. Joel Chua, amounted to “attempted homicide.” 

The House sergeant at arms, PMGen. Napoleon Taas, said the situation had become a grave security problem that could be solved by transferring Lopez out of the compound. He said that in her continuing insistence on staying despite being requested to leave, the Vice President had even sought permission to jog in the area. (An absurd idea, one may agree, and of a piece with the woman’s sense of entitlement.)

Sara Duterte’s latest demonstration of petulance at the House pushes the envelope further in her power play with lawmakers. There will doubtless be more of the same in the course of her continuing refusal to explain the disbursement of the P615-million confidential funds received and spent by the OVP and the DepEd when she was its chief. What to make of her insistence on staying in the House compound, in the office of her brother, Davao City Rep. Paolo Duterte, but that she considers the chamber’s protocols as hogwash, and herself above it?

The Vice President is making a show of fulfilling a promise to her staff members that she would keep them company if they are ordered detained on contempt charges by the committee. Per a report on Friday night, she is prepared to relocate the OVP in the House, as it were, in the event that her disbursing officers, who have so far snubbed the committee’s summonses, show up and are similarly cited in contempt and held in the chamber, even up to New Year’s Day if need be. 

Until when will this go on? Her behavior provokes wonderment at the costs of securing her and her coterie, and why this exhibitionism, this general disruption, and her latest invectives at the Marcoses and Romualdez, including vigorously swearing at their respective mothers, is being tolerated. 

Direct challenge

Sara Duterte’s actions in the chamber that he leads and commands are a direct challenge to Romualdez. She would set foot in the House—as she did when her father, the ex-president, testified under oath at the quad committee’s investigation into his war on drugs—but she would not attend the Inquiry that requires her presence. As though to counter the Speaker’s unprecedented statement on Thursday that she herself, and not her officials, should explain the use of the questioned confidential funds, she repeated her earlier claim that he had accepted a bribe. Yet she would not give details of the accusation. She described the inquiry as “unconstitutional”; she decried her “persecution”.

The Philippines is deep in the dumps of devastation from the storms, from China’s incessant incursions into its waters, from the peso’s fall vis a vis the US dollar. How does this split between Sara Duterte’s family and the ruling family—Romualdez is a first cousin of the President, whom she has described as unfit for the top post—help the country? Where will it lead? To be sure, the President’s manang, Sen. Imee Marcos, once said she would remain a friend of the Dutertes even if she’s the only one left. But this is getting tiresome, and a danger to children who are seeing and hearing it. Surely the Filipino people deserve more than an incessant display of conflict between the daughter of an ex-president charged with crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Court and an ousted dictator’s son and namesake. 

And until when will Zuleika Lopez, who has run interference for Sara Duterte as her chief of staff starting when she was hizzoner of Davao City, hold the line for her? Look at what this “government employee” has become.

At the Thursday hearing, Lopez demonstrated to the general public how a lawyer called upon in a formal inquiry to explain suspicious use of taxpayer money can say nothing and everything at once. She parried the lawmakers’ questions involving the confidential funds of the OVP and DepEd and deftly denied knowledge of their disbursement. She managed to maintain a cool exterior that belied Sara Duterte’s eventual request that she, the Vice President, be allowed to stay with the resource person who ostensibly has a chronic back problem, is afraid for her safety, is unaccustomed to being alone, is still fatigued from her recent trip to the United States, and sad about the condition of her aunt there. 

The hospital tests on Lopez reportedly revealed an anxiety attack and scoliosis.

The next hearing of the committee is scheduled on Monday. The weekend’s dramatic occurrences and Sara Duterte’s words of rage and murder notwithstanding, the public is expectant of progress and results.

Read more: Marcos-Duterte bickering is ‘all politics’ from which nothing can be gained, says Drilon