EDSA Waves In Case Solons Jail Duterte

 By Mortz C. Ortigoza, MPA

WHY the Quad Committee of the House of Representatives could cite in contempt anyone and throw anybody at the august chamber’s dentention cell or to any jail in Metro Manila but could not do it with former President Rodrigo Duterte and incumbent Vice President Sara Duterte?

The Quad comprises the committees on dangerous drugs, public order and safety, public accounts, and human rights that investigate alleged corruption of the Vice President on the hundreds of millions of confidential funds the government appropriated her on her first two years in office and the 30, 000 Filipino murdered by him on his gory Drug War that could shame the 4,000 persons Colombia’s Cartel King Pablo Escobar ordered assassinated by his sicarious and friends among the communist guerrillas.

Photo of President Rodrigo and the military is a photo grabbed from the Diplomat.

Yesterday’s hearing saw Office of the Vice President Chief of Staff and lawyer Zuleika Lopez sent into the slammer up to Nov. 25 after she wrote the Commission on Audit (CoA) advising its auditors to ignore the House on the basis that the COA’s probe is not yet complete. The solons were affronted by her actuation that was ordered by Duterte, she said, thus the citing in contempt.

 Incase there was preponderances of evidence that Sara ordered her, does the Quad members have the “balls” to order the VPs arrest and throw her in the detention cell, too?

When a smarting former Justice Secretary and ex-senator Leila de Lima unloaded her pent up emotions by refuting former President Duterte when the latter told the committee that he did not know De Lima from Adam, the public saw contemptible acts from the former president.

 Susmariosep! Did Duterte brainchild the sending of Delima to the brig because of those fabricated accusations steered up by the President’s classmate at the College of Law in San Beda and his then wig-sporting Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II by hailing those witnesses mostly from the national penintentiary to incriminate the former mistress of my kabaleyan chauffeur Ronnie Dayan of Urbiztondo, Pangasinan?

All those narcotics peddling cases against the beleaguered former Justice Secretary and solon were all dismissed by the courts because the main witnesses retracted on their raps.

De Lima was jailed at the national police headquarter in Quezon City for almost seven years. Damn! That’s heartbreaking for an innocent who was deprieved that long of her freedoms as provided in the Constitution.

“Di ho ba, nilapitan niya ako kinamayan niya pa ako so hindi niya ako kilala? Alam mo iyan,” La Leila tersely told the Quad members when Duterte shook her hand on the latter State of the Nation Address (SONA) at the House of Representatives in Quezon City when the former was still a senator.

When the Quad member asked the former president if he knew De Lima because the latter knew him like the palm of her hand, the fiery Duterte who has the propensity to utter expletives told all and sundry: “Akala ko wakwak ang itsura,” El Rodrigo quipped while his daughter Lady Sara was laughing in one of the seats there. Damn! I remembered again when she guffawed when her father told the crowd in Cebu that President Bongbong Marcos was bangág that got the ire of First Lady Liza Marcos.

 Wakwak is a Cebuano and Mindanao’s Ilonggo word for vampiric bird-like creature like yaya in Philippines’ mythology. It is said to snatch humans at night as prey.

Duterte even gestured to punch with his left hand De Lima – who sat besides him -- that caused many spectotors jaw to drop

Sanamagan! That’s hilarious but a slander. Why not the feisty Joseph Stephen Paduano – a former member of the communist hit squad Alex Boncayao -- , former police General Romeo Acop – a PMYer whom I interviewed about the Horizons 1 to 3 of the military during his stint as a congressman --,  Baptist Pastor Benny Abante, and former erotic flick’s actor  and Lagunan ex- Vice Governor Dan Fernandez did not strike the former president with their fires and brimstone contempt power on his De Lima’s faux pas and his threat to slap and attempt to throw the microphone to former Senator Sonny Trillanes. The former Navy official and PMYer told the Quad that Duterte should get rid of his bluff and immediately sign the bank waiver at the august body to expose the P2.4 billion narcotics money at the BPI his family deposited.

“Anong kapalit? Sampalin ko siya,” the former prexy said while Trillanes nodded his head smiling.

“Lulo’ mo!” Duterte told Trillanes.

I quipped upon posting this Duterte’s utterance “lulo’ at Facebook when I told everyone there that I grew up in Mindanao but the word was foreign to me.

“Ngayon ko lang nadinig itong word na lulo'. Kaparehas ba ito ng word na luto'?” I wrote.

Many lady friends in Davao City and Cotabato amusedly retort to me in the Visayan fashion: “Pag sure Sir, oie?!” It means they know that I knew what the word means. But because “lulo’” word is so sensitive I would not translate it in Tagalog or English here unlike the wakwak’s word the former president hurled at his pet peeve Delima.

I digress!

Why would the domineering Quad members – who could jail anybody by the dropped of a hat – could not throw to the slammer Vice President Sara and her dad Digong?

They couldn’t do it otherwise a big possibility that it could immediately unleash millions of Duterte’s supporters – who detest the comeback of narcotics peddling -- that could flood the highways in the country particularly EDSA and déjà vu the vicissitude that met then President Joseph Estrada (after the military led by my friend former President Fidel Ramos – whose alma mater was that military college near the Hudson River, New York) could happen to President Marcos.

To those who are still young to know this brouhaha, Estrada was forced to step down from office upon seeing that even his military's Chief of Staff General Angie Reyes withdrew his support from him.

Although the top brass of the military and the police could be professional and would remain loyal to President Marcos, we could not say those in the middle and lower level officials and the rank and files who were beneficiaries of the significant salary increase during the administration of President Duterte.

As a practicing reporter and editor of a provincial newspaper in Pangasinan, I met cops who were privates, corporals and sergeants who told me on conditioned of anonymity and with boldness that incase those congressmen jailed the former president they would even sacrifice their lives – Diyos ko antatapang naman! -- to save him from the brig in case the military and police rise up against the present government.

Now, who said that cult leader dooms day pastor, Son of God, and alleged rapist Apollo Quiboloy could marshall his 8 million followers (the police said his flocks are only 8,000 in and out of the Philippines) in EDSA (when he was surrounded by the determined cops with handcuffs at his residence in Davao City) and caused the downfall of the Marcos government?

The real McCoy of a cult in this country that could endanger the Quad members and Marcos – who could find themselves in the detention cell or elsewhere that only God knows -- are the followers of the charismatic former president --ang Tunay na Poon -- whose rabid loyalists proliferate the social media and vigorously bash with gusto the present dispensation.