Threat

How does one handle a threat?

Three options:

One, do nothing. This is what I call having a four monkeys syndrome (FMS) – see no evil, hear no evil, do no evil. The fourth monkey is a combination of the three. This requires a high level of stupidity and ignorance, an attitude that even the most stupid of monkeys disdains. By the way, when I say monkey, I do not refer to the Chinese monkey depicted in a recent issue of the China Daily.

Two, react. Prepare. This requires a high level of vigilance and intelligence work, the kind that borders on paranoia.

Three, sue the fu**ing bastard making the threat, especially if by all signs the threat is serious, even grave; and the one making the threat is capable of doing it and, most important of all, the one making the threat has made the threat explicit, on video – not once, not twice, but thrice.

Vice President Sara Duterte has threatened to kill the president of the Philippines, Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., on three occasions on video – on Oct. 18, 2024, Nov. 23, 2024 and on Nov. 26, 2024. There is a fourth video. It shows Sara’s brother, Baste Duterte, talking about Operation Romanov.

At the July 14 hearing of the Senate impeachment court, the prosecution, seeking a guilty verdict against VP Sara for the crime of grave threats and sedition, presented NBI investigator Atty. Jeremy Lotoc. On the witness stand for 11 hours, he was cross-examined by Sara’s defense counsel, Mark Vinluan. Despite tough questioning by Vinluan, who even implied that Lotoc got a lower Bar grade than Sara’s 80 percent, the veteran NBI investigator did not wilt.

Sara’s threats are real and absolute, Lotoc told the senator-judges. The VP had the “intent, motive and capability” to carry out her alleged threat to kill Marcos Jr., First Lady Louise Araneta Marcos and former Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez. Also, the VP had a clear motive to kill FM Jr. Kill President Marcos, and Sara succeeds as the president.

The NBI believes Duterte “committed the crime of grave threats and inciting to sedition,” using the standard of prima facie evidence with reasonable certainty of conviction.

The NBI had recommended three counts of grave threats and one count of inciting to sedition against Duterte in a Feb. 10, 2025 affidavit of investigation.

In the July 14 Senate impeachment court hearing, Senator-Judge Kiko Pangilinan confirmed that the videos presented before the court were authentic, complete and neither altered, spliced nor generated through artificial intelligence. For her part, Senator-Judge Pia Cayetano explored the legal appreciation of fear in the offense of grave threats, asking whether fear must be experienced by the intended victim or whether public perception is sufficient, and at what point a warning legally transforms into a criminal threat.

Re Baste’s Romanov, in July 1918, Russian Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Empress Alexandra and their five children were taken with their doctor and three servants into a basement room of a house in Yekaterinburg and executed by Bolshevik troops. The victims were repeatedly shot and bayoneted, with the killings allegedly taking 20 minutes to complete. Their skeletons remained undiscovered until 1979. The Romanov solution is what I have been proposing to get rid of the biggest corrupt bigwigs in this country. That is the only way to clean up the government, good for 30 years, a generation. But I am digressing.

In the view of senator-judges (what a pompous title), the siblings Pia and Alan Cayetano, Sara Duterte was not making a threat, even if Sara herself has declared, “No joke, no joke,” even if she made the threat not once, not twice, but thrice. Obvious, ba?

In the Cayetanos’ view, Sara Duterte committed no crime of grave threats, no crime of sedition. Not having committed any crime, the VP should remain VP, and patawa-tawa lang on the way to her banks (where the Anti-Money Laundering Council had dutifully catalogued transactions totaling P6.77 billion in 18 years despite her earning only P30 million during those 18 years). Some monkeys are smarter than others.

Funny. Ironic even. At the July 15, 2026 hearing of the Senate impeachment court, siblings Pia and Cayetano, senator-judges (wow) both, rose and spoke with anger. Both perceived a threat.

The day before, the NBI had announced it would investigate alleged anomalies related to the construction of facilities, in particular the controversial P50-million cauldron, for the 2019 staging of the Southeast Asian Games in New Clark City, Capas, Tarlac. The chair of the organizing committee was Alan Cayetano, then president Duterte’s foreign secretary. The buck stops with him.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) and Malacañang have thrown their full support behind the NBI decision to re-investigate the alleged irregularities. The inquiry, they claim, is driven by evidence, not politics or the ongoing impeachment trial of Sara Duterte.

“The Department of Justice has full confidence that the NBI will continue to carry out its work with the professionalism, integrity and independence expected of it,” the department said in a statement.

Now, Senator-Judge Alan C feels threatened. So does Pia C. “The chilling effect is there,” admitted Alan C, referring to the impending NBI probe of alleged anomalies under his watch preparing for the 2019 SEA Games.

“Wala na akong choice (I have no other choice). Ilalaban ko na eto (I will fight this out). Gagawin ko ang dapat kong gawin (I will do what I need to do),” Alan C angrily told his senator-judge colleagues in response to what he deemed an NBI threat (of intimidation).

By now, the Cayetanos know what a threat means. Even if it is not real, absolute, explicit and even if “intent, motive and capability” to carry it out are not there.

By the way, how do you feed a monkey? Throw bananas into his mouth. No joke, no joke.

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