Still, while not yet fully inactivated and still president, he cannot escape taking a position on an issue like Sara Duterte, an issue not just political and legal, but moral — indeed, an issue that poses an existential danger to the nation’s well-being
When Ferdinand Marcos Jr. goes to Congress on Monday, July 27, to report on the state of the nation, the air will be filled with foreboding of an emergency, one so grave and so imminent that what he has to say now and what he has to do from now on will define his presidency.
Everything will turn on how the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, his archenemy, goes. If she survives it, her path to the presidency, which she openly covets, becomes paved with dark intentions. And the curse is not just on him but on the entire nation. The only consolation is he gets it first.
The Senate, as an impeachment court, is now trying Duterte on four charges: one involves a death threat on Marcos, his wife, and his first-cousin the former Speaker Martin Romualdez; the others, embezzlement of taxpayer pesos in the hundreds of millions, unexplained wealth in the billions, and kickbacks to her office from anomalous contracts with suppliers.
Evidence in the embezzlement case is set to be presented at the trial. As for the death threat, the presentation has gone quickly. The prosecutors said the case was “rather straightforward.” Sure enough, the defense, in all those hours of cross-examination, did not so much as suggest that its client had not made the threat, because that would be a lie.
