The long goodbye

I have been convinced for a long time that the only thing in the end that can bring down a president, even an ex-president, is that president. Applying pressure only increases the possibility it will happen and who is positioned to benefit the most if it does happen.

Just the other day, in their heartland, the Great Eagle Father’s son thundered, “You will never be loved!” This was to contrast his father-in-exile with the incumbent president, who, despite being their mortal enemy, is someone they still don’t understand. This is the man who’d once told Clarita Carlos (remember her?), “When it comes to national issues I um, tend towards the conservative only because a mistake will cause so much suffering to so many people. In other words, you have to be very careful with the decisions you make and it’s not something you do off-hand, you think about it very hard, you talk to as many people as you can, and you make absolutely certain that you have done everything that you can absolutely do, ah, to make whatever your plan is, to make it work. Am I Machiavellian? Well, I’ve studied him quite thoroughly, and I know very many Machiavellians in my life.” Which is a long Paoayian detour to Machiavelli’s most famous point on whether it’s better to be feared or loved: “If you have to choose, it’s much safer to be feared than loved.”

That the Marcoses know how fickle the affections of the public can be is obvious; perhaps less so is that this lesson has not been internalized by their brasher foes, whose brashness may have gotten them in the fine mess they find themselves in.

Consider the continuing debate on why there was that campaign stop in Hong Kong even as news was circulating an arrest warrant was looming. Former senator Antonio Trillanes IV, who’s always interesting (but requires what he says taken with so many grains of salt, you’d better make sure it’s iodized so at least you won’t get goiter), says in 2023 there was a dress rehearsal for this scenario. Back then, he says, the Great Eagle Father expected a warrant to immediately follow the failure of his Supreme Court case challenging the International Criminal Court (ICC), so he went to Hong Kong precisely to figure out asylum if need be. Trillanes added that this time, a private jet was waiting at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) to take the former first family home after their arrival from Hong Kong. It seems, he said, they thought they could outrun the serving of a warrant and be in Fortress Davao before it came out.

The simplest explanation is always the best so one doesn’t have to go down the road of betrayal within the organization to see that the return to the Philippines was another example of the Great Eagle Father’s hubris that turned his successor, the President, into such an effective nemesis. Was this hubris egged on by lawyers in Manila or the children back home? That is the subject of speculation. The fact remains no rescue was possible: not by people storming Naia and not by means of a temporary restraining order from the Supremes.

In nine days, his birthday is supposed to produce shock and awe: rallies here and abroad. It will not affect his being in the dock. We saw this in the brisk, businesslike, tolerant but firm hearing in which his identity was confirmed by the ICC, which has resulted in a foreign lawyer—this is too serious to entrust to any local Twiddledum or Twiddledee.

The March 28 rallies are surely meant to maintain the upward momentum suggested by the surveys with regard to some (not all) of his senatorial candidates. It may change the composition of the Senate but the processes to come will retain their potency—and maximum peril. Six months of casework will be a tiring exercise in mind-numbing, grisly documentation but low on political energy. As the Guardian concisely put it, “the senator, the priest, and the forensic pathologist”—law, morality, and science—resulted in a case that couldn’t be ignored and by some accounts, had the judges convinced it would be intolerable to risk a return to any elected office from which the killings could resume.

Those old enough to remember the Apo in Makiki exile plotting and posturing will remember how his bluster only underlined the loss of power. Then, as now, the faithful at the jail’s gate will dwindle; the resources of the accused will be tied up as family and retainers muster their own defense. Even impeachment might be done by September and here, public opinion retains a majority, it is an exercise legitimately worth pursuing.

May the trial conclusively reveal that there was no genius but instead a fair share of cunning, bluster, and brutality behind the former president’s political persona and “governing”—too many academics, politicians, lawyers excused him and justified him for “brilliance.”