Days of reckoning

Former President Rodrigo Duterte (left) and Evangelist Apollo Quiboloy | PHOTO BY WILLIE LOMIBAO / INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON

Is there really an “orchestrated, incessant, and vicious” demolition job against the Dutertes, as claimed by former spokesperson Salvador Panelo? Or, if the former president’s police chief and now Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa were to be believed, could a grand conspiracy be in the offing among the Marcos administration, left-leaning personalities, and the opposition Liberal Party to nail the Dutertes and their allies?

Panelo and Dela Rosa noted the seemingly concerted moves that have shoved the Dutertes into public scrutiny, including a flurry of court cases and congressional hearings that have dug up contentious issues left hanging or unresolved under the previous administration.

Recall that in May this year, the Ombudsman found probable cause to prosecute for graft former Health Secretary Francisco Duque and Lloyd Christopher Lao of the Procurement Service-Department of Budget and Management, over the anomalous purchase of overpriced but inferior pandemic supplies from a little known and undercapitalized supplier. This, despite the lack of signatures on the Senate’s 2021 findings on the deal implicating then President Rodrigo Duterte himself, which left the report in limbo.

Graft and plunder charges

In early June, the police stormed the properties of religious leader Apollo Quiboloy in Davao City to serve his arrest warrants on child abuse and human trafficking charges, an operation that his property manager Duterte had described as an “overkill.”

The Senate hearings on illegal Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos) also commenced in May, and was followed quickly by several raids on these illegal gambling hubs and the arrest of those behind them, including dismissed Bamban, Tarlac mayor Alice Guo who, alas, had managed to flee the country. Pogos flourished under the Duterte administration and have been linked to such criminal activities as human trafficking, kidnapping, money laundering, and cyber scams.

In July, the police chief pulled out 75 of Vice President Sara Duterte’s security escorts, a move she had described as “political harassment” despite being left with more than 400 military bodyguards which, pointed out Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla, was more than that assigned to President Marcos.

Also in July, former senator Antonio Trillanes IV filed plunder, graft, and corruption charges against Duterte and Sen. Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go, among others, over infrastructure contracts in Davao City. He also filed graft and plunder charges over the allegedly anomalous acquisition of a P16-billion warship that was later downgraded into ordinary naval ships.

Illegal drugs

August also saw Remulla saying that the government won’t interfere should the International Criminal Police Organization arrest those named in the complaint filed by families of drug war victims to the International Criminal Court (ICC). This was after Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra told media that his office “cannot stop” the ICC prosecutor from visiting the country to investigate Duterte’s bloody drug war. Both statements were a complete turnaround to the administration’s previous position of noncooperation with the international court.

As if to twit Duterte over his defeatist stance on China’s aggressive maneuvers in the West Philippine Sea, Mr. Marcos has been actively pursuing alliances with several countries, showing up the former president for his suspect loyalties.

Then there’s the ongoing House hearings on the drug war that had a former Customs employee naming several members of the Duterte family and their allies as abetting the rampant smuggling of illegal drugs.

Last week, the House appropriations committee voted to subpoena the audit reports of the Commission on Audit (COA) on the use of the 2022-2023 confidential funds (CF) of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education, then headed by Vice President Sara Duterte. The COA previously noted that the OVP had gone through its P125-million CF in just 11 days.

Why only now?

All these are “politically motivated moves,” Duterte’s allies have protested, with Dela Rosa positing that they were calculated to eliminate the Dutertes as competition in the 2025 election. The timing is suspect, they claimed. Why exhume all these issues now?

Maybe the question should be, why only now? The answers are patently obvious to any observer of Philippine politics. Because with his presidential immunity no longer in place, the former chief executive can now be prosecuted for abuses committed in office, just like his predecessors Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Being out of his post, Duterte now has no wherewithal nor influence with which he allegedly persuaded others to cover up, or threaten and eliminate those who would oppose or expose him. Nor could he still appoint allies to strategic government posts where they were expected to protect his interests.

For long-suffering taxpayers who’ve had no viable recourse to stop the impunity, greed, and cover-up under the previous administration, this is not political harassment. The more precise word is “accountability.”