“The test of a first rate intelligence”, the American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
Certainly, we have so many geniuses around who have the talent to keep, simultaneously, two opposing ideas or contradictory propositions between one’s two ears.
This is best demonstrated in what will be recorded in Philippine legislative history as the longest running “attempt to impeach, convict and disqualify” Vice-President Inday Sara Duterte in the 2028 presidential election.
The scenario applies both to the “pro-impeachment” and “anti-impeachment” camps.
The setting, the actors, the bit players, even the plot, are all well known.
The “pro-impeachment” camp consists of the three main groups that filed the three impeachment complaints -- Akbayan Partylist, the Makabayan Bloc and the Coalition of Catholic priests and civil society leaders.
The “anti-impeachment” partisans are, among others, the so-called “Diehard Duterte Supporters” (DDS); Maisug, a multi-sectoral aggrupation of mass organizations from the urban poor, workers and their trade unions, women, senior citizens, etc. They support VP Sara Duterte and the Duterte brand of political leadership.
There is a third group that eschews being identified with either the “pro-impeachment” or “anti-impeachment” or “anti-Duterte” or “pro-Duterte” dichotomy. Their sympathies can be gleaned from their public pronouncements or preferred associations. To this group belongs the huge Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC) believers.
President Marcos Jr. is a class all his own. He is the most intelligent of them all. He can play neutral; behave like an “anti-impeachment” partisan or act as a “pro-impeachment” champion at the same time if he so chooses. He can say one thing and yet mean another. He can speak with a forked tongue.
When President Marcos Jr. said that VP Sara Duterte is so “un-important in the scheme of things” that there is no need to “impeach” her, his supporters took it to mean the opposite: that the President wanted her Vice-President impeached.
The Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC), once an avid supporter of the late President Marcos Sr., promptly expressed their support to the presidential son announcing a huge “prayer rally” for “peace and unity” at the Luneta Park. There were those who correctly concluded that the INC did not want VP Sara Duterte impeached by heeding the call of President Marcos Jr.
Beyond the elaborate spin to present the mammoth Iglesia Ni Cristo prayer rally last January 13 as nothing but supportive of President Marcos it cannot be denied that it was a brilliant coup to protect VP Sara herself.
Granting that that a fourth impeachment complaint will get the required support from the House of Representatives, will it pass through the Senate before or even after the mid-term election?
Impeach Vice-President Sara Duterte, anyone?
#WeTakeAStand #OpinYon #OpinYonColumn #Counterpoint