Minutes after midnight on November 23, the 15th anniversary of the Maguindanao massacre, a strange spectacle unfolded online. It wasn’t just another somber reminder of the tragedy’s brutality — it was a grotesque carnival of chaos, one that eerily echoed the mentality of the massacre’s architects, the Ampatuans.
It was almost poetic that such an anniversary would serve as the backdrop for the latest display of political warlord mentality. The Ampatuans may have fallen politically, but their twisted logic remains alive and well, this time not in the boondocks of Maguindanao, but on the national stage.
At the center of the online circus was none other than the ringmaster, Vice President Sara Duterte, who took the opportunity to channel her inner Ampatuan. She was going ballistic, taking that old saying, “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” and flipping it on its head.
Such fury has been marinated in power, ambition, and a good dose of I’ll-do-whatever-I-want attitude. No broken heart — this is a woman in power who happens to think like the Ampatuans, carrying a chip on her shoulder, and showing the world how nasty it can get.
How else should her shameful displays of moral bankruptcy be called but Ampatuan-like? By “Ampatuan-like,” I mean utak Ampatuan — the kind of mindset that shocks the public with a wishlist that includes decapitating a sitting President and tossing the remains of his dead father into the West Philippine Sea.
It didn’t stop there. Exactly 15 years after the massacre, Inday Sara — backed by the soundtrack of nervous Zoom static and political grenades hurled in every direction — volunteered the information that she made a hitman swear he’d murder the President, his wife, and his cousin if she got killed.
How, pray tell, was it not like a twisted rerun of the thought crimes that preceded the slaughter of 58 helpless souls, including 32 journalists, by savages in the backwoods of Maguindanao in 2009? It’s the same Ampatuan mindset that should have been buried in Maguindanao 15 years ago. But no, it’s alive, kicking, and frankly, scarier because it now poses a threat to political stability and, yes, national security.
Sara’s chief of staff, Zuleika Lopez, opened the circus from her dark detention room that provided the perfect “political prisoner” aesthetic. Lopez, caught between supposed anxiety attacks and indignation, gave us the first act: a monologue about the rule of law — or, more accurately, the lack of it.
Lopez’s medical drama added another layer of absurdity. First, she fell ill, supposedly, during the Zoom meeting. Then, she was rushed to not one, but two hospitals, as if she were auditioning for a cameo in Grey’s Anatomy.
Lopez, cited for contempt and ordered detained for a few days after giving congressmen the runaround during an official inquiry, accused the House security of barging in like unpaid extras in a cheap action film to haul her off to a women’s correctional facility. It had everything: drama, chaos, and a chief of staff openly falling apart as her boss watched from the wings.
Then came the Sara Duterte special.
It’s almost always a classic whenever a Duterte takes over — no warnings, no filters, no brakes. It was as if we were watching a suicide bomber detonate her political career online for the sake of kilig. And what a spectacle that was!
She turned her flamethrower on the Marcoses, making it a point to let the world know exactly how she sees the President: a liar. Bongbong Marcos was denounced by her for his failure to deliver on the farcical campaign promise of lowering rice prices to P20 per kilo. That promise, of course, was so transparently absurd it should be on souvenir mugs alongside trite tourist slogans.
But here’s the thing: if Sara knew it was a blatant lie, why did she still proceed to support his presidential bid? By choosing silence when the falsehood was glaringly obvious, she, as Marcos’ running mate, didn’t just overlook the deception — she became a willing accomplice, a silent co-conspirator in the grand charade.
She didn’t stop at Marcos himself — she set her sights on his wife, First Lady Liza Araneta Marcos. With a tone bordering on the confessional, she recounted how the First Lady allegedly instructed her to divert funds for some unspecified venture, monthly. Dutifully, Sara claimed, she passed it on to the Department of Education (DepEd), back when she was still at its helm.
Now, was that a whistleblowing moment? If so, it was an odd one, marked not by immediate outrage, but by delayed disclosure. Instead of sounding the alarm right then and there, Sara appeared to play along, effectively implicating herself as a participant in the very conduct she now seems eager to denounce.
She also took aim at Marcos’ cousin, Speaker Martin Romualdez. Sara accused him of bribing a Supreme Court justice, massive corruption, and confidently proclaimed he’d never win the presidency. According to Sara, there is an assassination plot against her, and Romualdez is supposedly behind it.
Then came the pièce de résistance: she casually drops, “Don’t worry about my security because I’ve already talked to someone. I told him, if I get killed, kill BBM, Liza Araneta, and Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke…I’ve already made arrangements, Ma’am. If I die, don’t stop until you kill them. And then he said yes.”
Anak ng pusang inasal! She was talking about assassination like it’s a casual chat with a plumber about fixing a leaky faucet.
The behavior was so inappropriate, to put it mildly, and even graver coming from someone occupying the Office of the Vice President. It was bold, theatrical, and profoundly unhinged that the Presidential Security Command (PSC) immediately went into overdrive because threats to the President and First Family are, naturally, taken seriously.
Then there’s Senator Bato dela Rosa. This man is like a walking, talking human shield for every dumb thing the Duterte family says. “She’s only human.” Sure, Bato. Humans make mistakes, like forgetting to pick up their laundry, but not casually talking about getting other people murdered and inciting violence.
By Saturday night, Sara was back in top form, rolling out the trademark Duterte move: the walk-back. In a GMA News Online report, she downplayed her earlier remarks, comparing them to her supposed rhetorical exaggeration about tossing the late dictator Marcos’ remains into the sea.
GMA quoted her as saying, “I am also concerned about my security because I hear things.” Huh, “hear things” like hearing voices? Now that is really, really dangerous.
So, it was merely a thought crime — which, come to think of it, may not really be a crime in this country. But normal people don’t typically broadcast their obsession with murder to the world.
It wasn’t the first time a Duterte has pulled this stunt.
There was, if you can imagine, an actual admission of a conversation with an assassin — an act so audaciously reckless that it borders on the absurd.
It’s deeply unsettling, not merely because of the moral rot it suggests, but because no politician in his right mind would ever voluntarily disclose such a detail.
After all, the notion that one chats and exchanges pleasantries with an assassin is not exactly the sort of thing one would want to advertise, unless, of course, one were no longer concerned with the precariousness of his own reputation.
The admission didn’t sound like an exaggeration or some poorly timed attempt at humor. Sara was running amok online, declaring, “No joke. No joke,” with all sincerity. I have yet to see a genuinely furious person throw a joke while ranting.
The melodrama didn’t unfold in a vacuum. It was merely the latest chapter in the escalating feud between the Dutertes and the Marcoses — a so-called “Uniteam” now spiraling into a “Unicrash.” At the rate things are going, with Sara herself starting to spill the beans and openly admitting that her name and reputation are already “sirang-sira,” it seems increasingly likely that there will be no political survivors left in their wake.
What’s next? Will Sara double down on her scorched-earth strategy, or will she once again scramble for damage control, perhaps cooking an ambush-me scenario to prove that the assassination plot is real in a desperate attempt to stave off a political freefall? Given the track record of the Dutertes, that wouldn’t come as a surprise.
What we saw last Saturday was pure hocus-pocus, a magician’s act. Suddenly, the Marcos Jr. administration is painted by Sara as a murderous regime (just like her father’s), plotting her assassination, and just like that, she’s the underdog. Brilliant, right? Except that while she’s busy playing the victim in this political telenovela, she won’t touch the scandals piling up in her own backyard.
Let’s not forget the other magic act in the Office of the Vice President where intelligence and confidential funds vanish — straight into someone’s pocket. Fake receipts? Silence. The Mary Grace Piattos mystery? Nothing.
But sure, let’s all focus on the evil Marcos empire while she tiptoes past her own dumpster fire. Classic misdirection. David Copperfield would be proud. Pastilan.
