If I’m reading DDS vloggers right, super-excited sila to join the INC peace rally on Jan 13, that’s next Monday. Nagkakaisa sila with Iglesia Ni Cristo vs the Lower House impeaching VP Sara, and they’re expecting huge crowds not just in Liwasang Bonifacio but also in plazas and parks across the islands (korek me if I’m wrong), and even abroad, kung saan-saan magmo-mobilize daw ang mga miyembro ng Iglesia at jo-join naman ang mga OFW na marami ay DDS.
If I heard right (ang hirap talaga sa vlogs, walang transcript, sometimes you have to listen twice, thrice, to be sure) parang inaasahan din nila na sasagot ang mga pro-Marcos with rallies of their own, and maybe just maybe maaaring magkagulo (remembering Edsa Tres 2001 when Arroyo declared a state of emergency), which would give daw Marcos reason to declare martial law (that’s what the NSC meetings are about daw), which would galvanize the anti-Marcos factions in the armed forces into defecting (a la Enrile-Ramos-Ram in 1986, asa pa) which would see daw INC & DDS morphing into a people power force that would oust PBBM (who wants to rule forever daw), which would see VP Sara ascending the throne (already).
Buong buo ang movie in their minds. But where are the rest of us in that story? I imagine that we’re with the anti-DDS and anti-BBM vloggers who are pushing for impeachment just because we don’t want another 6 years of a Duterte who’s pro-China, pro-EJKs, and pro-AliceGuos, unless of course Sara can convince us that she will not do a Digong AND that she is not corrupt or has never been involved in any illegal operations.
Samantala, the Lower House of Congress is sitting on the impeachment complaints kasi daw walang katiyakan that 2/3 of the current Senate sitting as Impeachment Court would vote to impeach, or that a verdict would be forthcoming before suspending for the May elections. Better to wait till after elections when, hopefully, winner senators are those who would vote to impeach?
But really, sabi nga ni Ronald Llamas who was PNoy‘s political adviser in the time of CJ Renato Corona‘s impeachment in 2012, when Senate Court hearings started they didn’t have the votes to convict. And yet at the end of it, only three voted to acquit. PBBM only has to do a PNoy, maybe? Unless, of course, the INC-DDS rallies (24 hours long? longer?) prove too persuasive for vote-hungry congressional candidates to ignore. The devil is in the politics.
KIT TATAD: “A stormy year for Bagong Pilipinas?”
https://www.manilatimes.net/2025/01/06/opinion/columns/a-stormy-year-for-bagong-pilipinas/2030541
Within a few days, if plans do not miscarry, the religious group Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) will launch a planned mass action nationwide against the impeachment complaints that have been filed in the House and the criminal charges of “crimes against humanity,” which the House quad committees (on dangerous drugs, public order and safety, human rights and public accounts) have recommended to be filed against former president Duterte in the Department of Justice for the alleged killings in his bloody war on drugs. The planned INC mass action could become the government’s biggest problem in the months ahead.
Ironically, Malacañang had lent an unwitting hand in starting the INC protest against Sara’s impeachment. Under the Constitution, the president has no role to play in any impeachment proceeding except his own. But he made the unfortunate error of saying, for the record, that Sara’s impeachment was “unnecessary and counterproductive.” However high-minded his objective in saying this, it was a constitutional error he can no longer unmake. Unhappily for him, the INC seized the opportunity to support his statement for its own ends and began organizing its troops for its intended mass action.
Apparently, the INC saw in the Dutertes’ quarrel with Malacañang a winnable cause to support, apart from the fact that it had its own deep grievances against Marcos. Obviously, Marcos had no foreknowing that the INC would pick up Sara’s cause and did not expect his Congress allies to go full blast against the Dutertes. But he can no longer withdraw his earlier statement on Sara’s impeachment; unless he completely and openly disavows that statement, it will remain on the record, and it is in full support of that statement that the INC has decided to mobilize its own forces to oppose Sara’s impeachment.
The trouble is that it has gone beyond all this. It isn’t just the INC and the Dutertes on the one hand and Malacañang and Congress on the other that are now involved. Various other groups with their own scores to settle with the government appear to be preparing to throw themselves into the fray if and when push comes to shove.
Among others, a big transport group with all sorts of recriminations against government regulators has begun talking about adding muscle to the INC rallies.
Disgruntled critics of the newly approved 2025 national budget are also threatening to call for “civil disobedience” over what one Department of Finance official and some gutsy columnists have denounced in the strongest possible terms.
Some declared opponents of the US’ unconstitutional presence in the EDCA sites are talking of the possibility of filing an impeachment complaint against the president himself, even with only a zero chance of success, for allegedly surrendering Philippine sovereignty to the US government.
And last but not least, certain groups in Mindanao are reported to have started recruiting volunteers for “whatever patriotic action becomes necessary when the time comes.”