Marcos-Romualdez cabal’s 3 plots vs Dutertes: All foiled

HISTORIANS will look with amazement, shaking their heads in anger, at the Marcos-Romualdez cabal’s frenzied plots, all in 2024, to continue in power after Ferdinand Marcos Jr. by law must step down in 2028. Rather than focusing on the economy, which faces both local and international headwinds at least this year, they concentrated on their shameless efforts to continue in power by hook or by crook, no doubt inspired by Ferdinand’s father’s 13 years of authoritarian rule.

All three were foiled by a vigilant public, especially by the Senate, social media and political activist citizens. The county should now shout, “Strike 3, you’re out.”

The first plot was the Pirma (painfully standing for “People’s Initiative for Reform Modernization and Action), which was a fast-break move to amend the Constitution through Congress acting as a constituent assembly.

It was run by billionaire businessman Noel Oñate, who undertook a similar Pirma for the late former president Fidel Ramos, for whom he not coincidentally handled the former president’s party’s finances.

The Marcos move was blocked by the Senate, which correctly suspected that it wouldn’t be able to vote as a chamber whether or not to approve the amendment. Rather, they would just make up 24 votes in a 341-member assembly, made up of the 24 senators and 317 members of the House of Representatives.

And what would that Romualdez assembly vote for? A change to a parliamentary system. And who would such a parliament vote for? Romualdez, of course.

P5 billion

What ended that plot were hearings in the Senate, which disclosed that at least P5 billion from poverty-alleviation programs would be used by the plotters to bribe Filipinos to vote to change the Constitution and to install a parliamentary system, in which Romualdez would be prime minister.

Second was the unprecedented conversion of four committees of the House of Representatives into a medieval-like Inquisition, a kangaroo court and a propaganda machine all rolled into one. It was intended to “convict” — in the eyes of the public — former president Rodrigo Duterte as a “mass murderer” because of his war on drugs and his daughter Sara as having malversed funds allocated to her.

The hearings were televised and, for a few sessions, attracted weak-minded, gullible audiences who couldn’t see what a miscarriage of justice they were. Why did the quad committee prohibit the cross-examination of alleged anti-Duterte witnesses — such as known drug lord Kerwin Espinosa, convicted shabu smuggler Mark Taguba, and Royina Garma, with a murder charge hanging over her head? Imagine a former senator, the megalomaniac Antonio Trillanes IV, repeating on TV the lies against the Dutertes he hurled years ago, such as the Dutertes’ bank accounts that the banks had denied existed.

Cross-examination is a pillar of determining the truth in criminal cases, as it could easily reveal that an accuser is lying. But the quad comm didn’t allow this. If they had, the cross-examination of Garma would have easily revealed that she was forced to tell lies against Duterte or else Marcos’ boys would have pursued a claim made years ago that she ordered the murder of a PCSO official who threatened to expose her corruption when she was PCSO chairman.

Inquisitor

If an inquisitor like former communist hit squad leader, now party-list member Joseph Paduano didn’t like a so-called resource person’s reply, off to detention he was thrown to because he was in “contempt” of the committee.

After 14 days of hearings, most lasting until late evening, the quad comm couldn’t come up with evidence to prove the Dutertes were lying since, after all, the witnesses were mostly criminals themselves who would lie just to get out of their jail pens or evade being jailed.

Their recommendation? For the grossly understaffed National Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department to investigate their charges. A Justice Department official who found that hilarious said: “They did a lousy job of getting evidence, and they want us to get non-existent evidence?”

The quad comm’s aim was to demonize the Dutertes so much that Sara would become unpopular enough to lose her charisma and be thrown out of the 2028 presidential race.

Subplot

A subplot here was to undertake a poll that the Marcos plotters would then use to portray Sara as having become unpopular, with her chances of winning in 2028 minimized because of the quad comm hearings.

Thus, the Social Weather Station made a poll, commissioned anonymously, as the quad comm hearings ended, with the Marcos boys thinking that Sara’s ratings had gone down steeply. Sara’s trust rating did slide down, but not in a big way, from 55 percent before the hearings to 52 percent after. Worse for the plotters, though, Filipinos saw Marcos’ hand in the persecution: His trust rating went down from 57 percent to 53 percent in the same period, even if there had been no demonization propaganda against him.

The Marcos-Romualdez cabal’s third plot was to impeach Sara, and they got three impeachment complaints filed in December, stupidly thinking that the propaganda impact would triple with three complaints. The first complaint was by mostly communist fronts, and the second was by either crackpots or paid hacks. The complaints weren’t even well thought-out and even were hilarious, probably because the complainants were rushing to get paid so they would have their Christmas money. For example, one impeachment complaint claimed Sara was silent on the South China Sea disputes between the Philippines and China.

Another claimed she “squandered funds” when she was Davao City mayor. But impeachment, as everyone except these idiots knows, involves only offenses allegedly conducted while a president, vice president and Supreme Court justices are in office.

Stupid

All the issues in the impeachment complaints were so patently stupid or patently non-impeachable misdemeanors that it’s very likely that unless they throw a billion pesos to bribe them, Romualdez will be unable to get two-thirds of the 300 or so House members to forward the complaint to the Senate. Senators, especially the rejectionists, would also not like to be shown on TV grilling a popular Sara. Indeed, sources said many of the senators had sent the word to its brainchild, Romualdez, that they couldn’t waste their time on that “garbage.”

It is a big headache now for the Marcos-Romualdez duo how to embarrassingly walk away from their impeachment plot.

Including the time Romualdez and his associates expended to plan, buy and prepare “witnesses” — my source claims that alleged drug lord Espinosa demanded in exchange for his testimony that the six cases against him be dropped, which Marcos boys got to do — and raise funds for the three plots, they have already spent half of Marcos’ term in office. And all three plots were a failure.

This would mean a huge defeat for the two, and politicians do not like losers.

Marcos spent half his presidency undertaking plots against Vice President Sara Duterte and half in social events, a future historian of the Philippine presidency will likely write.

Just like in the case of Trump, Sara’s exemplifies Nietzsche’s aphorism, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

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Marcos-Romualdez cabal’s 3 plots vs Dutertes: All foiled
Source: Breaking News PH