IN 2022 the Marcoses and the Dutertes faced a common enemy, Leni Robredo who was the anointed of the yellow fever that has since laced the political flavors and favors of this benighted country that emerged from the Edsa revolution that for all intents and purposes has proven itself to be a fluke. It was a fluke because the country merely yawned for more than three decades only to spin around to return the old names of a bygone era dismissed by the outburst of decades of pent-up national hatred and disgust.
With the Yellows reduced to murmurs, and with the Dutertes feeling unappreciated and sidelined by the Marcos-Romualdez blood clique, the fentanyl-inspired political patriarch of the Davao dynasty has turned bitter critic and apparent destabilizer of President Marcos’s administration, in particular, and the country in general. Former president Rodrigo Duterte and his sons, Congressman Polong and Mayor Baste, suddenly have nothing but hate for Marcos and Speaker Martin Romualdez.
The tables have turned. Now the Dutertes feel powerless and all they could do is cry wolf, shouting for Mindanao’s secession from the Republic. Actually this is obvious blackmail. Will PBBM give in?
It is difficult to discern what is in PBBM’s mind. There is no publicly announced follow-up to PBBM’s Fentanyl-retort to the former President’s accusation that he is a drug addict. Though recently the nation witnessed the much-publicized launching of a big-ticket infrastructure project for Mindandao in Davao, the lair of the Dutertes. Vice President Sarah Duterte attended the ritual but her father and siblings Cong. Polong and Mayor Baste were conspicuously absent.
During his time in Malacañang, Digong’s tongue was long on love for the country that he declared no hesitance in killing or murdering criminals for it and his children under the banner of Tokhang. Now he wants to dismember the country, claiming that Mindanao has been getting the short end of the bargain, that the national government doesn’t pay much attention to the South anyway. Well, what have you done as President for six years? Haven’t you given extra attention to Mindanao’s infrastructure and other needs? And what about the so-called Davao group who wielded untold influence in cornering government transactions and juicy positions in government?
So many sectors including legal luminaries call for a sedition case against Digong and his cohorts like former Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez. But will PBBM muster the courage to make them accountable for their seditious declarations?
