By Diego Mora | July 7, 2028
Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio tried to snatch the limelight on the second day of her trial before the Senate impeachment court by visiting her defense panel and meeting with some reporters to deliver her “dinuguan” statement. Consistent with her previous fumbles, like mistaking Jose Rizal’s quote as Andres Bonifacio’s, she roared before the microphone: “My statement is, in this bloodbath, and bludgeoning, I will be bloodied but unbowed…” She recited William Henley’s “Invictus” weeks after her half-sister, Kitty Duterte, cited the same poem! But Sara failed to add: “I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul.” Or make it “I am the driver of my bus, the pilot of my glider.”
Plagiarism has become a vice for Sara, whose capacity for original thinking is scant and whose dependence on her platoons of consultants compromises her ability to lead government. Remember the plagiarized picture book ghostwritten and published by her office to make her an author and look good to children? The New York author of the original work was flabbergasted to learn that his picture book was copy-pasted. The trouble became worse as those responsible for the misdeed insisted the book was the result of their creativity.
On the first two days of the trial, with Sara drumbeaters “beating the shit” out of the prosecutors with preposterous claims that lead defense counsel Sheila Sison “ate” the prosecutors due to her legal prowess, Sison actually was called out twice for not abiding by the rules. In her initial statement, Sison gave the impression that the trial is based on bad conscience and “mag-asawang sampal” on the face of the 32-million Filipinos who voted for Sara as vice president in 2022. So, the electoral result should overdetermine the outcome of the trial. Throw away the rules of evidence, discard legal principles and macadamize impeachment procedures.
This is like harking back to the monumental error during the Covid pandemic, when a proposed ban on tourists from Wuhan and other parts of China was “nakahihiya” according to Bong Go and ex-Health Secretary Franisco. Worse, gunslinger Rodrigo Duterte made a fool of himself by saying he would just shoot the Covid-19 virus. Not to be left behind, then Presidential Legal Counsel Sal Panelo justified the most stringent restrictions on the people since the pandemic was an “invasion.” Folie a deux or shared psychosis was as contagious as Covid 19, which apparently is making a comeback in Quezon City.
Lead defense counsel Sheila Sison set the tenor of Sara’s well-oiled comedy bar fans seconded to buttress the ramparts of her legal fortress. Grizzled court veterans thought that Sison would demonstrate the “fabrications,” “inconsistencies” and “logical fallacies” of the pieces of evidence lodged against the accused. Her opening statement betrayed that the Sara defense team was anchoring its arguments on the false argument that the senator-judges have no business finding Sara guilty since 32-million Filipinos voted for her in 2022. That is precisely the Sara legal theory: Her “landslide” win in 2022 impeaches succeeding legal challenges. She’s superior to Caesar’s wife and is legally protected by fictive lese majeste laws.
When it was time to confront the first article of impeachment, the defense slowed the proceedings by lodging objections left and right, with some whippersnapper being schooled by private prosecutor Amando Virgil Ligutan on the admissibility of photocopies as evidence, and pouncing on the evidence that Sara herself generated. Carlo Joaquin Narvasa melted. Can you raise any doubt about the death threats aired, videotaped and disseminated by Sara? The defense could not claim the threats were manufactured and admitted that the sentiments aired hewed closely to the desire of millions to get Marcos Jr., wife Liza Marcos and former Speaker Martin Romualdez out of the way. So there, death threats by popular demand that do not exist.
Turning the tables on the prosecution, Mark Vinluan claimed that Sara did not talk to an “assassin,” but only to a contract killer, or one who moonlights as a murderer, since Sara and her family were “threatened.” Vinluan’s truncated logic justified Sara’s threats as “unconventional” but “justified.” Yet, Sara’s threat is but a repeat of her statement that she would behead Marcos Jr. for not giving his watch to a graduate of a military school. Note as well that Sara told Sen. Imee Marcos that she would exhume Marcos Sr.’s body and throw it into the West Philippine Sea (WPS) in response to imagined threats on her person, reputation or delusion of grandeur.
It appears that the much-vaunted defense team has not done its homework and is merely attempting to throw all sorts of dubious arguments in the hope that the Duterte troll army and unpatriotic keyboard warriors funded by South China gangs as well as by unofficial Beijing instrumentalities will work triple time to influence public opinion and turn the tide in Sara’s favor. The Filipino people don’t want to be subjected to the bullshitual of the Sara defense lawyers. They want solid proof that Sara did not steal, did not amass dirty money and did not waste confidential funds. Will Atty. Zuleika Lopez, set to take the witness stand, justify the death threats Sara aired in the darkest of hours? Or will she add to what Jeremy Bentham said was “nonsense upon stilts”?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^