Marcos: Stunned, shell-shocked

THE president’s YouTube interview with Ka Tunying the other day showed Ferdinand Marcos Jr., as a businessman phrased it, “stunned, unable to comprehend what happened. I really did not expect he would give the ultimate sign of weakness, a call for friendship, a call to not fight; in effect he authorized (Navotas Rep.) Toby Tiangco to disown the impeachment.”

Indeed, Marcos’ statements in the interview reminded me of a fight in our Lourdes School days when a bully challenged a smaller kid to a fight, but was immediately knocked down with a single upper-cut. He got up without hesitation, extended his hand, and said “Bati na tayo.”

The bullied in this case is of course Vice President Sara Duterte, against whom Marcos threw everything but the kitchen sink in the past two years, by ordering a Congress “quadcom” to investigate her for corruption, ease her out as head of the education department, file an impeachment case against her, and kidnap her father to be jailed in a foreign land. Sara in effect soundly knocked out Marcos through the senatorial elections — despite several sycophants’ ridiculous, fawning efforts to claim it was not so.

He expressed his “Bati na tayo” in the following, verbatim: “Ayaw ko ng gulo. Gusto ko makasundo sa lahat ng tao. Mas maganda.” This is just like that school bully, standing up after his knockout and telling the guy he bullied: “Ayaw ko ng gulo.”

He doesn’t want trouble, he says. But through cousin, House Speaker Martin Romualdez, who owes his position entirely to Marcos for various reasons (as in the case of all past speakers), he got Congress to vote to impeach Sara. And as the ultimate supervisor of the Philippine National Police, did he not give the order to the police and other authorities under his command to forcibly bundle Sara’s father into a plane, kidnapped and thrown in jail at The Hague to stand trial in a foreign court — perhaps for years?

Yet Marcos has the gall to claim that he had nothing to do with Sara’s impeachment, and that there is just “this process” that has to be followed? Marcos’ election campaign manager Tiangco in the past several days has been singing the same tune, of course only at this time when it is incontrovertible that Sara, as a result of the elections, has enough senators in her corner to acquit her.

Tiangco

Tiangco’s explanation throws his boss’ image from the frying pan into the fire. If Marcos did not want Sara’s impeachment — which became a casus belli against him in the past two years, and for which his administration spent P24 billion to bribe the congressmen — then it is not him, but Romualdez, who became a congressman of a small district in Leyte with only 181,000 votes, who is leading this country of 68 million voters. That certainly isn’t a democracy.

The new Senate could even immediately throw the impeachment complaint into the dustbin even before a trial, through a majority resolution declaring that the Senate finds the House impeachment papers defective, since even Tiangco and then-deputy speaker Duke Frasco had declared publicly that the House leadership offered “benefits” — amounting to P150 million in ayuda and small infrastructure projects — for each district of a congressman signing the impeachment complaint.

With the nation showing overwhelming support for Sara through the elections, with many anti-Sara representatives even losing their seats — such as Manila 6th District Rep. Bienvenido Abante and Laguna’s Dan Fernandez — will congressmen insist that the complaint is legitimate and that the trial should be held?

The Tunying interview itself was a mistake as it depicted Marcos as a loser, losing his marbles — hardly the strong, brave leader that former president Rodrigo Duterte is demonstrating himself to be, even if thrown in jail as if he’s a common criminal. Did Tunying convince Marcos that he would “salvage his image” the way he thinks he did when after a run of bad press, he interviewed the beleaguered first lady last year?

Sara on the other hand, in her videotaped interviews, showed defiance and determination even as she smiled charmingly at her supporters: That’s what people want a leader to be, not a whiner. “I want a bloodbath,” said Sara, claiming that she would overpower her prosecutors. I wonder who, aside from Leila de Lima — who thinks the impeachment trial would be her claim to fame — would continue to volunteer to be Sara’s prosecutors now that it is certain she has enough votes to get an acquittal.

Taipans

Marcos told Tunying: “I’ve been talking to my CEO friends — the taipans — and I’ve been joking how easier it is to run a conglomerate than a government.” His friends would have told him if they were honest enough: “Stupid. If you were a leader and a good manager, you could have run the government as ‘easy’ as we do our companies. And you were also just too lazy, spending too much time at parties and junkets abroad.”

Indeed, the presidency doesn’t appear to even have a management system. There is no hierarchy that Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin — the “little president” in most other administrations — had to course a critical memo (one on a meeting with a pollster a month before the elections who showed the results of disastrous opinion polls) to not just a mere undersecretary but the appointments secretary.

Marcos in the interview seems to lose touch with reality, claiming that the reason his candidates did not win was that his administration’s achievements were not being communicated to the people. But he himself couldn’t enumerate such achievements. He claimed he was able to offer the masses rice at P20 per kilogram, because of good harvest in 2024.

That is fake news: the Philippine Statistics Authority had reported that palay, or unmilled rice, declined to a four-year low of 19.09 million metric tons (MMT) in 2024. The only reason this administration could offer a limited amount of rice at P20 per kg is that it is covering for the difference in market price of P29 per kg, with government money amounting to P12 billion.

Marcos in the interview appeared deluded, claiming that his administration has been focusing on long-term projects whose impact the masses won’t feel in years, even “after my administration.” But the only example he could give was the subway project in Metro Manila.

World Bank

But this project was first formalized when it was included in the 1977 Metro Manila Transport, Land Use and Development Planning Project sponsored by the World Bank, but was not implemented due to concerns about flooding in areas like Marikina, Cainta, Rosario and others.

It was all but forgotten — with governments instead building Light Railway Transit lines — until in 2016 the Duterte administration revived the project under its Build, Build, Build infrastructure program. The National Economic and Development Authority approved the project in September 2017, with Duterte as NEDA chairman giving the final approval shortly after.

Funding was secured through official development assistance (ODA) loans from Japan, with the first tranche signed in March 2018. The project’s total cost is around ₱488.5 billion, with the major part of it financed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA, the agency that delivers ODA for the government of Japan) and the rest by the Philippine government. Six Japanese firms were selected as project consultants in late 2018, ensuring technical expertise and oversight. The groundbreaking ceremony took place in Valenzuela City in February 2019, marking the official start of construction.

What a liar this president is.

---

Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao

Twitter: @bobitiglao

Archives: www.rigobertotiglao.com

Book orders: www.rigobertotiglao.com/shop

The post Marcos: Stunned, shell-shocked first appeared on Rigoberto Tiglao.

Marcos: Stunned, shell-shocked
Source: Breaking News PH