Hindi naman ako nagulat, pero nadismaya nang lubusan, when on the very day that the Lower House approved overwhelmingly (257 of 318 ) the Articles of Impeachment vs. the VP ay saka naman nagkudeta sa Senado — biglang naging majority of 13 ang dating minority DDS bloc of 9 (ImeeMarcos, ChizEscudero, JoelVillanueva, BongGo, Bato, RobinPadilla, RodanteMarcoleta, JinggoyEstrada, AlanPeterCayetano).
Hindi lang napasipot napaapir ng Cayetano siblings (it would seem) si Bato from hiding, napabaliktad rin ang apat na dati’y nasa Sotto majority: ang magkapatid na Villar, ang Pia na kapatid ni APC of course, and the political butterfly Legarda-cum-Leviste, mother of the kulangkulang solarboy. Dynasties all, with axes to grind, legal cases pending, staking their political futures on a Duterte comeback, kapit sa patalim.
I hope Ronald Llamas is right, that it’s a manipis, even a shaky, majority that could shift yet again, sana soon.
Sana rin sumuko na si Bato, stop giving the Senate an excuse to delay the trial. Then we will see what the Cayetanos are up to, really. They’ll be calling the shots, these two lawyers, and I imagine there’ll be a lot of legal hair-splitting over objections already raised by Sara mimso, that the charges lacked proof, the hearings were a fishing expedition, and the complainants were politically motivated.
I hope they don’t do a Makoy circa 1985. Back in the first Sandiganbayan trial of Ver et al in the Ninoy assassination case, Marcos managed to disallow all the evidence unearthed by the Agrava Fact-Finding Board that found Ver et al indictable, eventually acquitting all the accused in November ’85. We know what happened not too long after that.
Kung maniniwala tayo sa surveys taken at the height of the Justice Committee’s hearings, it would seem that the madlang pipol have heard enough allegations, and now they want to hear from the VP, there’s just no getting away from it. Never mind what Cayetano’s Bible says. I’m sure we can find another saying the exact opposite. #Forthwith