The script
When then-justice secretary Vitaliano Aguirre became so irreparably unpopular on account of the many controversial decisions he made, most Filipinos correctly surmised that President Duterte would be left with no other choice but to let go of his San Beda law classmate. What they did not see was how the decision was executed and at precisely when. That left Filipinos at the foot of surmise, begging for its mercy.
The government often employs a variety of means to effect change, especially one that it can and must do only reluctantly, for whatever reason. To do this, it dips into its bag of tricks and unleashes a number of its so-called tricks of the trade. There are no official handbooks on these tricks and they probably just develop in accordance with the ingenuity of those who employ them.
Everyone is, therefore, entitled to his own guessing game. But here is how and when I think it began, culling from the benefit of hindsight. I think it began a few days before someone started the rumor that Aguirre was on the way out. It began with a leave taken by presidential spokesman Harry Roque. A leave is as normal as breathing. So nothing wrong with Roque being absent from the Palace press briefings he normally presides.
Everything seemed so normal that nobody noticed, must less suspected something was amiss, that it was not presidential communications chief Martin Andanar who took over a chore that required a regular "press" guy. The Filipino public just took it for granted that it was a virtual unknown who took over the Palace presscons, a guy named Menardo Guevarra whose demeanor did not seem to match his impressive-sounding title of special assistant executive secretary.
Guevarra went about this chore for probably a week, with nobody considering it as a virtual but subtle public acclimatization. Malacañang was apparently trying to make the public get used to Guevarra but the public just did not get it at the time. Then, sometime about the middle of this charade, the rumor was unleashed that Aguirre was on the way out. This was followed by the usual denials which, as everyone knows, only feeds further speculation.
The real genius came when somebody who had to be very reliable fed the information to the leading national newspaper that, indeed, Duterte was going to fire Aguirre. That it was fed to only one media outlet made it clear it was intended to be a scoop. But it was a scoop intended to be denied. And yet the denial did not seem to ruffle the newspaper. On the contrary, it seemed confidently sure it was right, precisely because in fact it was right.
The scoop and the denial were all part of the game of conditioning the public in anticipation of an impending earth-shaking announcement. But why be wary of how the public might take the announcement if it was to be an announcement the public was likely anticipating eagerly? Well, it was not only the public that was being conditioned. More importantly, it was also Aguirre. He may have let the president down, but he was still a friend. If he had to be killed, he had to be killed softly.
So when the rumor, denial, scoop, and further denial swirled, only a fool would not have seen that something must be up. And Aguirre, whatever the public might think of him, is no fool. He knew he was being told without the president, his friend, telling him. And so the rigodon swept in. Aguirre resigned, kuno, and Duterte accepted it, kuno. But it was not until Guevarra was named as his replacement that we knew what really happened and how. The script worked to the letter.
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