The SMNI probe: Another House offensive against the Dutertes?

It appears to many of us independent observers that the war between the camps of Speaker Martin Ferdinand Romualdez and the group of the Dutertes has come to a point of no return. Both 2028 presidentiables, Inday Sara Duterte and Speaker Martin Romualdez, have crossed the Rubicon, so to say. The vice president allegedly called somebody in the House "tambaloslos" and the speaker cannot wash his hands of the series of what appears to us as palpably offensive, defensive, and retaliatory moves against the Dutertes.

Aside from removing the Confidential and Intelligence Funds of DepEd and the Office of the Vice President, and the removal of Duterte allies like GMA and Congressman Isidro Ungab from the House Leadership, the House under the control and supervision of the Speaker continues to hit all that are allied with the Dutertes. There is a consolidated House resolution, now in the plenary, on the proposal to urge the president to cooperate with the International Criminal Court in the initiative to dig into the alleged summary executions and reported extrajudicial killings in connection with former president Rodrigo Duterte's so-called war against drugs, This column does not buy the crap that the speaker is not behind these moves.

It is the considered view of this column that confidential and intelligence funds are neither proper nor ethical and the House moves to remove them should be commended by the people. The general public also applauds the House initiative to allow the ICC to proceed with its investigation. The country's withdrawal from Rome's statute was only after the initiation of complaints filed by the victims as early as 2017 when the Philippines was still a state party to that international law. The current House moves to investigate the SMNI for irresponsible broadcasting that supposedly contained allegations on the alleged outrageous amounts of expenses by the speaker in frequently accompanying his cousin, the president, in his frequent global peregrinations.

But while we do applaud these House initiatives, we are only stressing that the motives behind all these seemingly noble and high-level investigations and inquiries are less than sublime. These moves, to our humble opinion, are really attacks by a putative presidential contender against his probable opponent in 2028. The network of SMNI, which is publicly known as being controlled by Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, is now in hot water and its franchise being threatened because the former president is using this network to air his regular program "Galing sa Masa, Para sa Masa". It is our humble view that all these are inter-connected and are really skirmishes which are preparatory to the political war in 2028.

The people are not that naive or brainless so as not to be able to surmise that the political pot is already brewing. While the House is indeed, as a matter of collateral benefit, doing the people much favor by exposing abuses on the air, we should also be totally candid that the purpose that triggered this investigation is really to disable the Dutertes, after the former president issued some provocative and antagonistic remarks against the House. It should be recalled that the former president mentioned something about misuse of public funds by the House, its leadership and its members. This investigation against the SMNI, "res ipsa loquitur" has all the appearances of a retaliatory move.

If the House is really serious in going after the Dutertes, then its leadership and membership should support the criminal case filed by Representative France Castro against the former president for grave threats. The House should also revive the congressional inquiry into the highly-controversial Pharmally case involving alleged massive overpricing of COVID-19 equipment and paraphernalia. But all these should be dissociated from the political rivalry between the vice president and the speaker. In doing so, indeed, the House would be virtually declaring war against the Dutertes.

The bottom line is that the people should applaud the House for these many commendable initiatives. But the House leadership should assure the people that the real motives behind all these are nobler than partisan politics and more sublime than a vengeful retaliation by a bunch of traditional politicians. As Rizal wrote: "Pure must the motives be, before any sacrifice can be acceptable."