By Diego Morra
July 14 is celebrated in France as Bastille Day, when the working class rose up in arms in 1789 against the aristocracy and its armed minions as well as rapacious landlords and capitalists. A century later, the Second International was established to lay the foundations for socialism in Europe.
On July 14 this year, the 16 defense lawyers of Vice President Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio got battered and bruised before the Senate impeachment court, affirming that death threats were, indeed, hurled by Sara against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his wife Liza, and former Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez but justified the same as the natural offshoot of a previous death threat issued against the Duterte political dynasty through “Oplan Romanov.”
It was a facile ploy at projection, clinical psychologists maintained, and the defense lawyers lost no time in manufacturing a horrific plot to murder Sara, her husband, children and anybody else surnamed Duterte. The defense promised to lay bare the *Grundrisse of the “massacre plot” with a borrowed Russian nomenclature. The only trouble is that there was no Oplan Romanov. Indecently, lawyer Jeremy Lotoc, a topnotch National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) prober, exposed the Romanov yarn as the handiwork of Davao City acting Mayor Sebastian Duterte, who used the tsarist surname in January 2024 to warn the Marcoses that they may yet suffer the fate of the massacred Tsar Nicholas II and his family.
In an ugly ploy, the defense tried to exploit the Oplan that the Dutertes fabricated as an elaborate scheme by the Marcoses to massacre all the members of the Davao political dynasty. Talk of **pathos stumbling and becoming ***bathos. To compound the problem of the defense, Sen. Erwin Tulfo confirmed that he had heard the Romanov “plot” from Baste Duterte. Bicol Saro Rep. Terry Ridon also heard the same warning aired in Davao City. With thousands of listeners confirming that Baste was the original inventor of the Romanov plot, Sara’s defense wilted. It also explained why Sara and another Duterte blogger named Princess Maui never materialized during the NBI investigation. Sara never came forward to make any statement under oath. Why? Perjury is cheap and Sara knew that she would be criminally liable if she lies about the false Romanov episode.
The defense also botched its never-ending examination of the previous witness, NBI agent and certified public accountant (CPA) John Mark Calilung, who authenticated the death threats issued by Sara in the wee, small hours of the morning of Nov. 23, 2024. Despite the circumlocution of two defense lawyers and at least 47 objections, the highly-regarded counsel failed to destroy the narration of the witness. For sure, the threats were videotaped by the Duterte camp, it was Sara talking and cursing as he issued the threats, and the “press conference” at the most unholy hour only added affirmed the seriousness of Sara’s purpose. There was no sense for anyone to look for the contracted Sara gunman or engage in pettifoggery about “conditional” threats since everything was authenticated and validated by Sara and her cohorts.
In another attempt to get out of the quicksand of her own making, Sara issued a statement on July 14, 2026 to deny that she threatened the Marcoses and Romualdez, in effect disputing the threats that had been confirmed by her lawyers and recorded in horrifyingly vivid color. Her badly-written statement only compounded her woes as it added more evidence that Sara cannot be truthful and would never take the oath even if her father’s life depended on it. July 14 was a bad day for Sara and her 16 defense lawyers as it proved that there appears to be no unanimity on their legal theory or that Sara herself was dictating how the defense should be handled.
Despite the spirited defense of Sens. Allan Peter and Pia Cayetano, as well as the ill-received issues raised by Sen. Robinhood Padilla, the prosecution achieved its goals on that day. The defense will now have to debunk the prosecution’s narrative after they failed to impeach the integrity of the NBI witnesses who simply followed the evidence, analyzed the documents and video footages and looked into the ****actus reus and *****mens rea of Sara, who is on the dock, with her fitness to hold her top position in flames and her ambition to snatch Malacanang in tatters.
The walls of Sara’s Jericho are tumbling down and like the artillery piece called Humpty Dumpty that sat on a wall, it is bound to fall, not because of incompetence and clumsiness alone but because Sara and the Dutertes failed to respect the truth. Sara has been quoted repeatedly as saying that honesty, sincerity and truth are not needed in politics. Sadly, the 32 million who voted for her in 2022 want to know the truth and are asking her, for heaven’s sake, why are you so damn scared of the truth? The Cayetanos and Padilla may resort to using truncated logic to justify Sara’s death threats but it cannot destroy the record, the validated documents and the gravity of a gunman’s contract. Is recruiting a hired gun really part of the job description of a vice president? Sara cannot erase the fact that she benefits from Marcos Jr.’s demise. On this basis alone, she should be kicked out of officialdom for eternity. #
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WORDS AND PHRASES OF THE DAY
Grundrisse (German, plural for Grundriss) – Ground plan, outline, or foundation.
Pathos (Greek) – Rhetorical or literary device that appeals to the audience’s emotions, values, or beliefs to elicit a strong emotional response.
Bathos (Greek) – Sudden, often ludicrous transition from a serious, elevated style to a trivial or mundane one.
Actus reus (Latin) – Guilty act.
Mens rea (Latin) – Guilty mind.