Robin’s confidential fund heroes

On Monday, the country will observe National Heroes’ Day, honoring the courage, sacrifices and contributions of Filipinos who fought for our independence, freedom and democracy. It is an occasion for all of us, especially the younger generation, to revisit our past, rediscover our heroes and martyrs and draw lessons from their struggles. It is a day that demands our highest respect and honor.

And yet, just days before this solemn commemoration, Sen. Robin Padilla somehow managed to drag the names of our heroes into the controversy surrounding Vice President Sara Duterte’s 11-day, multimillion-peso spending spree in confidential funds and the utterly disgusting liquidation report her office submitted to government auditors.

In what can only be described as a spectacular exercise in historical and intellectual contortion, Robin invoked the noms de guerre used by heroes such as Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, Antonio Luna and Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino to defend the ridiculous aliases attached to recipients of Sara’s confidential funds.

Robin apparently thought that putting Antonio Pagong, Mary Grace Piattos, Andy Lim, Xuniso Belat and their ilk in the same league as Rizal, Bonifacio and Ninoy would somehow make the former look heroic and legitimate. As though a revolutionary alias adopted to fight oppression is somehow equivalent to an alias used to conceal the identities of people receiving millions in taxpayers’ money.

To Robin’s world, this was a clever analogy. To the rest of us, it was deeply insulting.

Our heroes used clandestine names to evade persecution, protect fellow revolutionaries and fight tyranny. Sara’s minions used aliases to evade accountability and transparency. To invoke Rizal, Bonifacio and Ninoy in an attempt to justify fraudulent confidential fund disbursements is a sacrilege.

Worse was Robin’s astonishing arrogance in making the argument, as if he were delivering a profound historical revelation to a nation too stupid to understand what he alone, apparently, has discovered. The problem was not that the public failed to understand his argument. There was simply nothing coherent to understand.

Sen. Bam Aquino’s rebuttal was understandably swift and sharp. While acknowledging that his uncle Ninoy did use an alias, he pointed out that he had no confidential funds.

And when Atty. Mae Divinagracia of the prosecution attempted to dismantle Robin’s argument, he sought refuge with the presiding officer of the impeachment court, complaining that arguing with him was not allowed.

So much for the fearless warrior of logic and history. Apparently, Robin believes he is entitled to make an argument, no matter how absurd, but not to have that argument answered and challenged.

But why is Robin this way? Does he actually believe the nonsense he is saying?

I suspect he genuinely does.

His electoral success may have greatly contributed to his hubris. To him, winning millions of votes is proof not only that he is popular, but that he speaks for the people, understands them and therefore is right. A challenge to his flawed arguments is not treated as a legitimate intellectual exercise, or even as a necessary correction, but as an insult from people who think they are smarter than him and, by extension, smarter than the millions who elected him.

And Robin is not alone. He is part of a cabal whose record in power was marked by massive killings, impunity and authoritarianism, and which is now positioning itself for a comeback in 2028.

What makes Robin’s performance more than merely laughable is the political project behind it – populist anti-intellectualism at its most dangerous. It rails against the supposedly “heartless, condescending and educated” elite, only to produce another kind of elite, whose political capital is popularity, bravado and performative authenticity rather than knowledge, competence and integrity.

There is nothing inherently wrong with being “uncredentialed.” A diploma does not make one intelligent, honest or competent, just as its absence does not make one ignorant. The problem begins when shallowness is made a virtue, braggadocio mistaken for competence, ignorance worn as authenticity, good intentions alone deemed sufficient and expertise dismissed as elitism.

In such an environment, Robin the senator does not have to know more and take his work seriously; he merely has to sound confident. He does not have to understand history better; he only has to resort to stupid simplisms and cite historical anecdotes stripped of any context to support whatever he already wants to believe.

This is the supreme irony of Robin’s invocation of our heroes. The very people he cited as historical precedents embodied almost the exact opposite of the intellectual posture he displayed.

Our revolutionaries who challenged Spanish colonial rule were not merely people of courage. Many were intellectuals, organizers, educators, political thinkers and modernizers who understood that building a free nation required far more than bravery. It required knowledge, discipline, critical thinking and competent leadership.

Rizal was a physician, writer and scholar. Mabini was a lawyer and political thinker. Luna was a military strategist. Bonifacio, an organic intellectual, was multilingual, an avid reader, a political thinker and an eloquent organizer who immersed himself in the ideas necessary to understand and overthrow colonial rule.

Our heroes were not merely people of guns and courage. They educated themselves and others. They organized. They read. They debated. They raised public consciousness and acquired the knowledge and skills necessary not only to wage a revolution, but to imagine and build a nation.

Our heroes fought tyranny not so that Filipinos could be governed by people who invoke their names in vain to evade accountability and promote untruths. If we truly want to honor our heroes, then we must protect their names and legacy from being used as props to excuse precisely the kind of ignorance, corruption and impunity they spent their lives fighting against.