Battle lines drawn

Friends of both camps will deny it to the heavens, but it looks like battle lines have been drawn between the current and previous administrations, and the vaunted UniTeam is coming apart.

So far the warring camps are portraying President Marcos to be above the fray. But how long before the acts of Speaker Martin Romualdez against the Duterte camp are seen to have the blessings of BBM?

Upon the resumption of sessions last Monday after the break for the village elections and holidays for the dead, among the first items on the agenda of the House of Representatives was to lambast critics of the chamber.

Romualdez did not mention any names or go into specifics. But his ally, Senior Deputy Speaker Aurelio Gonzales Jr., went on the record to identify former president Rodrigo Duterte, who recently described Congress as the “most rotten institution,” and who pointed to Romualdez as the one with the biggest unaudited funding allocation of them all.

Before naming names, Gonzales announced he was quitting Duterte’s party the PDP-Laban.

The next day, Duterte sniffed that he didn’t care if he ended up as the only member left in the PDP-Laban; he wouldn’t stop anyone from bolting.

He said this in his radio program wherein he also admitted meeting with several retired military generals, but denied that they discussed destabilization or a coup attempt.

Only government corruption would generate public sympathy for a coup, Duterte said, and it is still too early to pass judgment on the magnitude of the problem under BBM.

While urging the people to continue supporting the Marcos administration (of which his daughter Sara after all is part of), Duterte has never been one to mask his dislike for anyone.

Rating BBM’s performance in the past 16 months, Duterte gave the man he once described as a weakling compared to Ferdinand Senior a rating of six. With 10 the highest, that’s a barely passing, unflattering assessment.

There was no immediate comment from Malacañang, but BBM’s favorite cousin the Speaker struck another blow on Tuesday, this time against Duterte supporters.

Sara Duterte’s staunch ally Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who was earlier demoted from senior deputy speaker to just one of several deputy speakers, lost this position on Tuesday, along with Rody Duterte’s ally, Davao City 3rd District Rep. Isidro Ungab.

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Cracks in the UniTeam must have started forming from Day One of the administration. But it seems the break came following the coup attempt against Romualdez allegedly launched by GMA last May, apparently with Daughterte’s support.

GMA strenuously denied the coup plot, but Romualdez didn’t buy it.

The insincerity of the denial was aggravated by VP Sara quitting Romualdez’s party the Lakas-CMD, the vehicle that she used for her vice presidential bid. The VP deplored GMA’s demotion while at the same time advising an unnamed “tambaloslos” to temper his ambition.

Romualdez, who surely understands Visayan dialects and knows that a tambaloslos is a mythical monster with oversized scrotum, did not respond to the crude insult.

But after some time, his allies in the super majority made it known that Daughterte would not get her request for a total of P650 million in confidential funds for 2024: a hefty P500 million for the Office of the Vice President and P150 million for the Department of Education.

This was when Rody Duterte, by most accounts estranged from his daughter, began opening his mouth in her defense, swinging out against Congress in general and Romualdez in particular.

Since Duterte named names, it was a stronger attack than the cowardly reference to an unnamed tambaloslos. And it was the attack that the house didn’t let pass as sessions resumed this week. GMA and Ungab were just the first casualties.

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The House must have been emboldened by a recent survey showing 57 percent public approval for the realignment of confidential funds to agencies in charge of protecting the West Philippine Sea and other national security issues.

At the same time, surveys by reputable pollsters also showed a remarkable double-digit drop in the approval and trust ratings of Daughterte, with one survey showing her fall worse than BBM’s.

Considering that the surveys were taken at the height of the debate over the confidential funds, the pollsters attributed the plunge in VP Sara’s ratings to that controversy.

The surveys were also taken at the time that rice prices began spiking, with a panicky government imposing an ill-conceived price cap. The equally steep fall in the ratings of BBM must have persuaded him to finally let go of his concurrent post as secretary of agriculture.

With the double-digit fall in the ratings of the UniTeam tandem, certain folks are smelling blood. Worsening the bad news for Daughterte, the House saw an improvement in its ratings.

And seeing the survey numbers, senators also agreed to go along with the realignment of all confidential and intelligence funds to agencies with security functions. BBM’s elder sister, now outside the Palace kulambo or mosquito net, said she disagreed with the realignment.

VP Sara still faces the possibility of being ordered by the Supreme Court to return the P125 million in secret funds from the Office of the President, which she spent within just 11 days in December last year.

Aside from stripping the VP / education chief of secret funds and her House allies of key positions in the chamber, what else can Romualdez and his cousin at Malacañang do to the Duterte camp?

BBM can have mercy on the nation and pick a qualified person to take charge of dealing with one of the country’s most challenging problems, the crisis in education. The VP is clearly in over her head in that department.

The government may also cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in its investigation of possible crimes against humanity committed in Duterte’s war on drugs, as president and when he was mayor of Davao City.

The period includes the time when Sara Duterte was Davao mayor. She has been named in ICC probe documents along with Duterte’s former chief enforcer, Sen. Ronald dela Rosa, and longtime aide Sen. Bong Go.

Yesterday, left with no choice (but claiming it was creating divisiveness), VP Sara said she would no longer pursue her request for confidential funds.

Something good sometimes comes out of the internecine political battles in this country.