First of a series

MASS and social media have recently been inundated by a slew of news, "tsismis" and fake news involving Filipino women of diverse status, political color, different persuasions and atypical motivations. But these women have several distinctive traits in common. The first cluster is strong-willed and wields political influence either by fiat as occupying a singularly powerful elective post, as in Vice President Sara Duterte, or the first lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, unelected, nonetheless in a position of vast influence and potential for manipulation by virtue of being married to a perceived weak spouse. Some of these women maneuver around the periphery of power and are themselves powerful but refuse to brandish the same, like Sen. Imee Marcos, in whom many among those who lived and survived the martial law regime of the dictator see the traits of the father. For bad or good, those nostalgic for the old regime regret the Filipino voter's choice of the wrong Marcos. And then there are women who have been unseated from power through the whims of dysfunctional government institutions like the fugitive and suspected Chinese sleeper agent Mayor Alice Guo of Bamban, Tarlac.

The other category is women who, by their notoriety and their strategic personal relations, took advantage of their 15 minutes of fame, attempting to tear to shreds the reputations of the powerful and the mighty as in the disgruntled paramour revealing juicy tidbits about her former Davao politico-businessman lover who has long been removed from power and tale-telling distasteful exposés about the Malacañang "polvoron"-snorting crowd. And these anecdotes are given credence through female internet personalities who rule social media, providing pulpits through their YouTube video blogs. These "Marites" with thousands of followers lap up any scraps of gossip thrown their way, propelling the same to go viral. This is gossip in the fringes providing entertainment to the inane. These women of the second cluster are not the subjects of this column ("The spy and the paramour," The Manila Times, Aug. 14, 2024).

Sara

The vice president appeared before the House Committee on Appropriations hearings recently to do two simple things: defend the budget of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and respond to queries on the expenditures of the Department of Education from which she recently resigned — in disgust. She did neither, telegraphing instead to the honorable members of the budget committee what she really thought of them.

What came out in the hearing was that she disbursed her confidential fund of P125 million in just 11 days, P35 million on the purchase of supplies and P3.5 million for chairs, tables and computers; another P40 million for the provision of medical and food aid. On top of these, she has caused the publication of a children's book, which she purportedly authored to the tune of P10 million for 200,000 copies — while she was education secretary.

The catch here is that all these are disallowed by the Commission on Audit (CoA). And the book was reportedly plagiarized from a US author and used by Sara as campaign material. It is not so much the amounts spent but her attitude when asked to explain and her demeanor at the hearings showing her disdain for her inquisitors.

Let me quote one of her critics: "Sara Duterte, I believe, is sick of a narcissistic personality disorder, as others in her family are. When she went to the House (August 27 budget hearing), she knew it would put her to shame. Her game plan fits the narcissist's playbook to a T: she will control the interpellations so that she can dodge the most threatening questions. Once in control of the process, she can throw squid tactics so as to transfer blame..." (Antonio J. Montalvan 2nd, Vera Files).

Sara's behavior by any standard was appalling, especially for one who has been installed by millions of Filipinos to the second highest office of the land. On the other hand, she had compelling reasons to behave that way as the House of Representatives was enemy territory, bastion of the allies of the Marcos dynasty. Sara was reacting to the despicable behavior of a female committee member, "Madame Chair" Stella Luz Quimbo, a former lowly academic who is herself now being roasted on social media for her tasteless display of very expensive branded luxury watches and bags. A side story to the hearings yet relevant. The hearings are ostensibly structured to scrutinize all branches of government to ensure public monies are spent for the public good. Incongruently, corruption by an inquisitor has gone viral.

But this modern-day Spanish Inquisition of an inquiry was obviously designed to politically crucify Sara, being the most capable Duterte to dislodge the Marcoses from their dynastical proclivities. And the virtual Torquemada pulls the strings unseen from behind — the self-proclaimed heir to the Marcos dynasty, Martin Romualdez. A summary of three articles from The Manila Times is excerpted to put things in proper perspective. ("Clash of dynasties," "The self-appointed heir, heiress," "We are being played," TMT, March 6 and 13; and April 27.)

A capricious pact

Since the dissolution of the "UniTeam" of the Marcos-Duterte political dynasties forged in 2022, Sara, who could have won the presidency but gave way to BBM as his VP and with her inclusion in the Marcos administration and promises of prestigious and important positions, assumed the cloak of heiress-apparent. But this tenuous partnership was never meant to last one presidential cycle. The Marcos family, in power for decades and booted out of power and in exile for decades more since 1986, saw the need to rehabilitate the patriarch's image as Philippine dictator during his martial law regime — and continue the Marcos legacy of "Ang Bagong Lipunan." It was obvious that BBM's watch of six- years may not be enough. Former president Duterte foresaw this in 2022 and vehemently objected to naïve daughter Sara running as Marcos' VP — allowing BBM to use the Duterte prestige to propel the Marcoses back to power.

Thus, the break came at an Apollo Quiboloy Maisug prayer rally on Feb. 21, 2024, when the Dutertes clamored for BBM, first lady Liza, and the surrogate heir Speaker Martin Romualdez to step down from their posts, with Deegong describing BBM as "bangag" — a dope addict. While the unthinking male Dutertes were disparaging the Malacañang occupants, Sara was on the sidelines, lending some sort of credence and approbation by her presence and silence. This did not sit well with the first lady.

This was just the start of a series of Pastor Quiboloy-sponsored Philippine-wide "Maisug" prayer rallies that were designed to erode the credibility of the regime. At first, BBM's reaction to the personal slanders was dismissed as the "fentanyl-induced" ravings of the former president. But these persistent assaults echoed by the allies of the Deegong were deemed to be the ultimate in lese majeste. With the tame and weak reaction of the President defending the honor of the family, the first lady Liza stepped in and made her move.

Next week:
The woman DDS love to hate

Last of two parts

LAST week's column ended with a rhetorical question: which political dynasty will dominate Philippine politics post-2028 upon the Marcos-Duterte coalition breakup? This conundrum is tangential to the intent of Pulse Asia, per se, but the data points continue to give out vignettes forming an integral part of this narrative.

Focus will now shift to the comparative analysis of the surveys on President Marcos Jr., former president Duterte and their surrogates; Vice President Sara Duterte, scion of the Duterte clan and House Speaker Martin Romualdez, self-proclaimed heir to the Marcoses — while BBM and Imee's children are politically ripening. These are the two contemporary political dynasties competing for dominance in this coming midterm elections toward the presidential contest that will spell the dominance of either in 2028 or beyond.

Pulse Asia can't reflect the consequences of the clash between BBM and Sara. Their third quarter survey, however, could suggest the same. But to refresh our memories, the actual breakup may have occurred with the surging popularity of VP Sara, buoyed up by the still-popular Duterte, putting the Marcos dynasty in jeopardy. BBM then allowed the International Criminal Court (ICC) to resume the investigation of the Deegong's drug wars and human rights violations — a virtual Damocles sword. When he was president, Duterte cut ties with the ICC, curtailing its ability to pursue an investigation of the extrajudicial killings.

In retaliation, a series of prayer rallies was initiated by a vengeful ex-president, sponsored by Quiboloy, the "Appointed Son of God" who gave Duterte a platform, SMNI, to attack BBM. Excerpts from my column quoted her: "There was no mincing of words. Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, Appointed Son of God (ASOG), on Feb. 21, 2024, called for... President BBM (and first lady Liza) and Speaker Martin Romualdez to step down from your posts. You are no longer worthy to be our trusted leaders. These echoed Davao Mayor 'Baste' Duterte's demands for BBM to resign in a prayer rally in Davao last January 28. And in an expected ad hominem by the Duterte himself, he described BBM as 'basag' (a drug addict)!?" ("Clash of dynasties," TMT, June 3, 2024)

Martin Romualdez — Cardinal Richelieu

Enter the billionaire and ambitious Speaker Martin — more of a Romualdez than a Marcos — who holds a grudge against Quiboloy's SMNI for exposing his P1.8 billion travel allowances and his indiscretions in the lower house, imperiling his presidential ambitions. SMNI's franchise subsequently was suspended — shades of ABS-CBN's gutting by the Deegong during his watch.

But Martin is a character of his own. With his initial moves, using the prestige of the Marcoses, he assumed the role of the Marcos couple's Cardinal Richelieu, serving the family while consolidating his own supremacy at the powerful lower house of Congress — biding his time, manipulating the weak president with perhaps the tentative but tacit acquiescence of the consort. But unlike the French Cardinal, the speaker wanted it all.

In the Pulse Asia survey, mentioned in my column last week, BBM's approval rating collapsed to 53 percent from a high of 84 percent, while Duterte's equivalent rating in his first two quarters in 2016 even went up to 88 percent. But the more relevant figures to ponder upon are those of the surrogates' current trust ratings: VP Sara's was a high of 69 percent while that of Speaker Martin, a dismal 35 percent! To the Marcos heir-apparent, this was unconscionable.

VP Sara's demolition

Thus, the rival heiress' head's ongoing decapitation. It started with Marcos and the House stripping VP Sara of her discretionary funds as education secretary and later the budget of the Office of the Vice President. As I wrote in the same column, "Sara's desire to assume a high-profile role in BBM's Cabinet as secretary of defense was not granted. The education portfolio was a poor substitute. And to add salt to the wound, Sara's VP office was stripped of P500 million and DepEd of P150 million in confidential intelligence funds (CIF).

"Intelligence funds" are nebulous purposed confidential funds originally for the use of surveillance by police and defense agencies for security purposes. The practice of allocating these funds to civilian agencies and favored local government units (LGU) has skirted the guidelines, disbursements and liquidation of the same as they are exempted from the Commission on Audit's (CoA) standard procedures. More often than not, they are unaudited and may be deemed unconstitutional. These lucrative funds have been used anomalously as campaign funds bloating the personal coffers of powerful politicians, mayors/governors and agency heads. BBM's own office (OP) was allocated P4.5 billion — half of the P10.64 billion CIF in the 2024 budget."

It did not help that during the current 2025 congressional budget hearing, the beleaguered Sara's display of belligerence and arrogance, mimicking a now toothless Duterte patron — did not sit well with the committee members. It pissed off both allies and detractors — doubtless to the glee of the speaker's cohorts.

With Richelieu in the saddle, the relentless degrading of Sara and the Dutertes continues. Now in the current hearings of both houses are the exposition of new evidence from Davao prison inmates of the Deegong's alleged elimination of convicted Chinese drug lords. A patchwork of cases and innuendoes stitched in a quilt of old and new are being revived through the grandstanding congressional hearings, not the proper courts; the resuscitation of the Pharmally anomalies of officials around the presidential orbit that could involve the Deegong himself; tying this up with POGO that began to proliferate during the Duterte administration. All these meant to engulf the Dutertes now that the dynasty head was no longer in power.

Richelieu's ascendancy

This brings us to the question of a possible reversal of roles in the political power structure of government. The resident Malacañang couple has recently become vulnerable with the exposé of the use of illegal drugs in "polvoron" parties. ("The spy and the paramour," TMT, Aug. 14, 2024)

The cognoscenti in the highest echelons of government, including the Marites of the social media, have begun to speculate that the first couple's vulnerability plays into the hands of Speaker Martin, who may now morph into a 'Svengali' coming into his own — and holds the power to pursue investigations of 'polvoron' usage and proliferation even in the hallowed halls of Malacañang. The alliance of the speaker and the couple, particularly the powerful consort, may be undergoing some sort of mutation. One cannot help but hazard a guess that we may be confronted with the classical situation of the "tail wagging the dog." Who now controls the levers of power in this government?

Until Pulse Asia frames these questions and injects the same into the consciousness of the Filipinos as part of the process of educating them about their plight — the data points can only reveal nuances where a tale can be woven subject to the biases of those that interpret the same. This column awaits the findings of the research for the third quarter of this year and beyond.

Meanwhile, we assume full responsibility for the conclusions and speculations arrived at from these data points.

Last of two parts

IT has been a month since Ukraine invaded Russia, ostensibly underscoring Putin's inutility and continued humiliation with his allies and, more importantly, his credibility with the Russian people who have been led to believe that the original Russian invasion 30 months ago in February 2022, was a short punitive sortie that Putin promised would end in a few days upon the fall of Kyiv bringing Ukraine to its knees and back in the Russian fold.

Putin's adventure is now in its third year. And the end is not in sight. But Russia now occupies a large swath of land in the Donbas region and those adjoining the Crimea. Russian forces are now entrenched in the eastern part of Ukraine bordering Russia.

Putin sold the fiction to the Russian people that this incursion into Ukraine was upon the demand of the Russian-speaking population of the Donbas, where the local Russian population was allegedly facing persecution and needed protection from the Ukrainian government — dubbing this act as "denazification" of Ukraine.

Antecedents of Russo-Ukraine war

To put things in perspective, although Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, this conflict had been germinating years earlier. This year, 2024, is the 10th anniversary of the Ukraine-Russo conflict. I quote excerpts from my column ("Ukraine war revisited — America speaks with forked tongue," The Manila Times, June 14, 2023).

"Ukraine's invasion by Russia was the sum total of NATO's relentless encroachment over the years that included the CIA-sponsored Euromaidan revolution in 2013 resulting in a regime change in Ukraine, which in turn gave Putin the alibi to annex Ukraine's southern peninsula of Crimea in 2014 and recognize the Russian-sponsored separatist states of Donetsk and Luhansk in the southeast, collectively known as the Donbas region."

Further, the seeds of this conflict were planted during the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) during the intervening years of 1989-1992 ("Ukraine: Putin's war — a briefer," TMT, March 9, 2022; and "Ukraine war — heading toward Armageddon," TMT, Aug. 28, 2024).

What was untenable was that upon the dissolution of the USSR, then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev extracted a promise from America and Germany that NATO would not enlarge "one inch eastward" after Gorbachev disbanded the Soviet military alliance (Warsaw Pact). But NATO's later enticement of the old Warsaw Pact countries, particularly Ukraine, into its fold was a negation of that pledge. The entire premise of NATO enlargement to Eastern Europe was a violation of this agreement.

"Just imagine NATO with its short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) at the borders of Russia. How was it different when Khrushchev in 1962 stationed missiles in Cuba just outside America's borders? Kennedy drew the line then as Putin similarly has drawn the line now. NATO's overture to Ukraine after the USSR's collapse is tantamount to Putin's red line that America and the West have long crossed. America and NATO, in essence, actually provided a casus belli for Putin's acts."

Storyline of Ukraine's Russian invasion

The Aug. 6, 2024, Ukraine invasion of Kursk Oblast brought the war to Russian soil — the first time since WW 2. Although Putin's control of state media on putting the lid on Ukraine's invasion has been almost total, morsels of news trickled down through the heavy censorship. For one, people from hundreds of displaced communities in Kursk and Belgorod were evacuated, and these frightened citizens disseminated their fear to relatives, friends and other citizens in adjoining oblasts. The images of hordes of evacuees on the roads reminiscent of the aftermath of the 1943 Nazi blitzkrieg have gone viral. Suddenly, hostilities could be at every Russian's doorstep, and the realities of bloodshed could become part of their daily lives.

In the summer of 2023, Ukraine conducted a much-awaited counter-offensive to reoccupy Donbas. That failed. It suffered 200,000 casualties, while Russia lost more than three times that much. But "mano-a-mano" with Russia in a war of attrition was a one-sided affair. Comparatively, Russia is the larger combatant with more resources and greater wealth available, a bigger defense industrial base and more warm bodies. Ukraine solely dependent on NATO and the US for its military resources is a no-match. Ukraine was forced to shift back to its current defensive mode.

Russia's subsequent mobilization was a disaster where more than a million of its young men fled the country to avoid conscription. National conscriptions were unpopular with Russian mothers whose sons came back maimed or in caskets, inducing political dissent among the populace, anathema to a closed communist society. Similarly, finding volunteers for Ukraine was challenging where draft dodgers of fighting age fled abroad through Poland and Slovakia — according to the BBC.

The Western press further revealed that Russia outgunned Ukraine on artillery by 20 to one until the US Congress finally approved $60 billion in military aid in April 2024. The best estimates are that it is still outgunned in artillery shells eight to one. But Ukraine has the advantage of advanced NATO weapons technology and better trained and motivated manpower.

Even with these conditions, Russia managed slow, steady, methodical gains across the eastern front with its quantity of firepower and its young cannon fodder. Russian forces are embedded in the oblast of Luhansk with two major cities of Severodonetsk and Lyshansk; Donetsk with the city of Mariupol; Zaporizhzhia and its nuclear power plant and the city of Melitopol. The bloody battle and recent occupation of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, major Ukraine cities, was disastrous for Ukraine. Since the war began, roughly one-third of Ukraine's territory has been in Russian hands.

With war weariness descending on both countries, but with the momentum on the Russian side, Putin, last June 2024, set his own terms for peace, demanding that Ukraine withdraw its forces from the four provinces of Donbas and even those still unoccupied by Russia. Furthermore, it demanded that Crimea, occupied since 2014, be recognized as Russian. And more importantly, it abandoned its desire for membership in NATO and assumed a status of permanent neutrality. Zelenskyy rejected these supercilious conditions.

Hemorrhaging soldiers and weaponry and losing ground since 2023, Zelenskyy and his military leadership decided they needed to wrest the initiative from Putin. Thus, this gamble on a bold attack on the sparsely defended Kursk Oblast. It was a desperate gesture of bravado that could work — if the strategy were to use this occupation of Russian territory as a bargaining chip for an eventual ceasefire and peace treaty. But more importantly Zelenskyy has brought the war's realities to Russian citizens who for long have been deceived by Putin. This has now become a contest between Russian mothers versus Putin. How long will Putin hold on to power amid the babushkas' and Rossiyani's wrath?

Ukraine's lifeblood depends on America and NATO's sustenance. But Putin holds one card he hopes will be dealt with this November. His friend, Trump, is running for the US presidency. Trump has already declared that he will solve the war on day one of his presidency. He will suspend the shipment of war materiel to Zelenskyy.

Little does he know that his friend will lose the presidency. Meanwhile, Armageddon is postponed!