Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad

One would have to be an idiot not to believe that this latest attack on Sara is President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s desperate move to prevent her from running for the presidency in 2028. Contrast the issuance of an arrest warrant against Sara to the case of former House speaker Martin Romualdez, against whom the Ombudsman special panel of prosecutors filed a case of plunder and direct bribery in July, yet so far no charge has been filed with the Sandiganbayan.

The head of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) who recommended the filing of the criminal charge against Sara is Melvin Matibag, appointed to the post only in February 2026. He has totally no experience in criminal investigation. The head of the Justice department which filed the case is Fedderick Vida, who was appointed to the post only in November 2025. Vida also has no experience in the criminal justice system; the former justice secretary Crispin Remulla took him in first as his assistant secretary and then undersecretary in charge of finance and administration. Vida’s sole qualification for those posts is loyalty as he had been previously the now Ombudsman Remulla Jr.’s right-hand man in Cavite politics.

The judge who ordered Sara’s arrest is the Quezon City Regional Trial Court’s (RTC) Maria Angelica de Ramos, who was appointed to the post straight from a mediocre private law practice in March 2025. Despite the serious controversial issues over a case filed against a sitting vice president, de Ramos issued the arrest warrant in just 18 working days after the case was filed in August by the Justice department. Before this episode, de Ramos’ only public exposure was a press conference in 2022, where she launched an obscure movie she had produced, directed and acted in.

Would these mediocre officials with zero political bases have decided on their own to take down the second most powerful official of the land?

Perhaps with the impeachment trial floundering, President Marcos had what he thought was a brilliant idea. Marcos may have calculated that by having criminal charges filed against Sara, he needed to bribe only one official — the judge hearing the case — instead of 19 senators required to convict in his impeachment tack now appearing to be failing.

Desperation

Perhaps Marcos in his desperation has lost his powers of reason, panicking since he is sure a Duterte presidency would be a total disaster for him and his family. This is especially so with his first cousin ex-speaker Martin Romualdez likely to rat on him to save his own skin — which he, in fact, hinted at when he said publicly that he would “drag everybody down” with him.

Marcos also can no longer benefit from the advice of two legal luminaries he had in Malacañang since 2022: former chief presidential legal counsel Juan Ponce Enrile, who died in November, and former executive secretary Lucas Bersamin, a former Supreme Court chief justice, who resigned that same month after being implicated in the flood control corruption scandal.

Wasn’t Marcos told that Sara isn’t banned from running for the presidency even if that RTC judge rules her guilty? This is of course even unlikely, as the case will likely drag on till the election of the next president who, going by all polls, will be Sara. The wheels of the justice system notoriously grind slow here; former justice secretary Leila de Lima’s drug cases were filed in 2017, and dismissed only in June 2024, seven years later, while that pork-barrel case against Enrile took 11 years.

But it is very unlikely that there will be a trial, given the fact that it is crystal clear that Sara is an impeachable official who can be sued only after she steps down as vice president. Since there is an actual case, and one of national importance since the accused is the vice president, the Supreme Court will intervene to stop it, and even order the disbarment of those involved in the filing of the case and the issuance of the arrest warrant.

The Supreme Court, in fact, would have grounds to feel the case as an insult to it. As recently as July 2025, it promulgated in Duterte v. House of Representatives (GR 278359) that declared: “Impeachable officers are not immune from liability for wrongdoing during their tenure; they are immune only from being subjected to suit or being removed by means other than impeachment.”

Misread

Marcos misread or chose to misread the first part of that sentence. What the court means is that impeachable officials such as VP Sara can be sued for alleged crimes during their tenure only after he or she leaves the post. This is what in fact happened to former president Joseph Estrada, who was sued for plunder only after he was kicked out of the presidency.

The Supreme Court should remove Judge de Ramos from her post, disbar the justice secretary and members of his prosecution as well as the NBI director — all lawyers and “officers of the court” — for gross ignorance of the law, especially as its ruling on this matter was made only recently, and with regard to the second-highest official of the land.

There is a sound institutional reason for this rule. The offices named in Article XI are not occupying ordinary positions in the civil service. They include the president, vice president, Supreme Court justices, constitutional commissioners and the Ombudsman. The Constitution deliberately provides a special mechanism for holding them to account while they serve. This structure protects them from malicious or bothersome suits that can distract them from their constitutional duties.

That protection is not an endorsement of misconduct. It is a barrier against the use of police power and criminal process as political weapons — which is precisely what the Marcos administration is doing now.

The court in shielding high officials from criminal charges while they are in office, and imposing only impeachment as the recourse to their alleged crimes, did not distinguish them in rank. For instance, Gamaliel Cordoba and Marilyn Barua-Yap can’t be sued if they commit any crime while still in office. Who are they? The former is head of the audit commission, and the latter is chairman of the Civil Service Commission — constitutional bodies whose members make up the class of officials Article XI declared as impeachable officials.

Unconstitutional

The Supreme Court would certainly strike down soon the criminal charges against Sara as blatantly unconstitutional.

Allowing Judge de Ramos to try the vice president would open the floodgates to a barrage of criminal charges against other impeachable officers — the president, Supreme Court justices, the Ombudsman and members of the Commissions on Audit, Civil Service and Elections. These high officials will be spending most of their time and finances responding to these charges, paralyzing the government.

Other than imposing on Sara another battle to fight and significant expenses for legal fees, Marcos’ move will not benefit him. It is bereft of reason, insane.

If Sara is convicted and jailed, she would be transformed into the hero archetype whom Filipinos love, and she would win in 2028 as president with the biggest landslide in our history. A Supreme Court decision declaring Marcos’ move unconstitutional will be another blow to his growing reputation as a president on the way to the dump. The stupidity of this move will bolster opposition claims that he has been using mind-altering drugs so much that this has made him lose his judgment.

And if Sara is killed — a plan which she said she now suspects — or ruled guilty by the impeachment court, any one of her two politician brothers, Paolo and Sebastian, could replace her, with the Duterte brand even given a boost with her martyrdom.

This, of course, all reminds me of that ancient Greek saying, “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

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Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad
Source: Breaking News PH