“I noticed how calm and composed the Vice President was.”
It is as if the heavens cried for us. Days after the Chiz-baked “reconciliation” in Bicol where PBbM exchanged perfunctory pleasantries with FVPLeni in Sorsogon, Kristine triggered massive floods which inundated most of the region.
Kristine devastated many more provinces over two days and nights of intense rains, even as the President seemed dazed while presiding over a command conference. Did the typhoon’s local name trigger memories?
Days before, VPISZD rained epithets against her president-partner with many describing her conduct as that of one who has become “unhinged.”
She made a rejoinder two days after. She is “unforgiving, unyielding and unbowed.” Accent the “unforgiving.”
She has a long memory, unlike many of us who tend to forget too soon and forgive too easily.
The choir of detractors from members of the HoR and other officials of government had best take note, and pray she never becomes president of the land.
Was she caught in a moment of uncontrollable anger when she talked about throwing the corpse of a president into the contentious WPS, the same corpse her father buried in a plot reserved for heroes of the Republic? Was she temporarily blinded by hate towards the son when she imagined herself wringing his neck? Lapsus lingual or deliberate?
I reviewed her Friday press conference, and also the one before that, and noticed how calm and composed she was. Even complaining about the air-conditioning twice was deviously used to highlight her father’s damning accusation against her former political partner.
She knew that her diatribes would shock the nation and multiply her enemies who have just been waiting for a reason to come out of their closets, thinking the time has become ripe. Yet she would remain unbowed. After all, she remains the constitutionally designated successor, and there are more than three years to go in that role.
She would not yield to them, whether to the QuadCom or to threats of impeachment. Let them try their worst, for all she could care.
If they should impeach her in the HoR, which they easily could, the Senate will have to try her, and there she would have another chance to display her unyielding character.
With elections just around the corner, there would be a new set of senators in the 20th Congress. She can count who would be with her, and who would not, as well as those who would tarry and weigh their judgment well according to the shifting winds of Philippine politics.
Meanwhile, she could work to derail the candidacies of those she has penciled as adversarial. There are many skeletons in the closets of some who are running for that once-august body. She can always ask Janet Napoles in prison. And all she has to do is expose them to deny them their hoped-for election under the Alyansa banner.
Just see where the floods hit hardest, despite massive flood control and river-dredging projects funded by pork and more pork.
For the next three years and eight months, she will be a thorn in their necks, a pain in their asses, a boil they cannot lance.
She is likely to remind people about the 20-peso-per-kilo rice, and our addiction to food imports, while prices remain high and life becomes more miserable. She is likely to detail the fat commissions pocketed by legislators, and let the people realize how picayune the accusations against her on her handling of presidentially-approved confidential funds are in contrast. She can always use Mayor Benjie Magalong’s studied analyses as reference.
She is likely to compare the extent of the drug menace these days compared to her father’s past, and paint a picture of chaos and mayhem in our urban warrens.
Pushed to the wall, she has no other recourse than to push back, and trust her to do just that.
Thus far, the resident Rasputins in the Palace have executed their demolition jobs well with plenty of help from public funds. In coffee shops and the watering holes of the “Marites,” there are whispers about some white-skinned Rasputin directing the planned destruction of her and her family image to the point of no repair.
They have been pretty good at their assigned mission, with a little help from the pinklawans who pine for lost glory and ride on the coattails of the Rasputins, but the lady has calculated her survival chances, and now she has started to strike back.
Where was it said that “heaven hath no rage like love to hatred turn, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned?”
As for the unyielding and unbowed Vice President, she should take comfort in what Nietzsche said that “what cannot kill you, can only make you stronger.”