Soap Opera Senate

Do you watch the ongoing Senate courtroom drama? I don’t. I have a mountain of chores, undone tasks, and a strong desire to protect my blood pressure from the daily influx of political stress. I would honestly prefer a quiet, blissfully uninformed life. Let them slug it out in the plenary for all I care.

But because it happens to be the most relevant, unavoidable issue in the country right now, I am forcing myself to look. And what I am finding is a masterclass in the absurd.

First, why are they counting backward? The trial skipped straight past the financial scandals of Articles 1 through 3 and launched directly into Article IV: Grave Threats and Inciting to Sedition. It’s like starting a television series on season four because that’s where the explosions are.

Then came the grand legal battle over paper. The defense threw a massive tantrum because the prosecution tried to introduce printouts and photocopies of digital evidence.

As a regular citizen, this makes me deeply bitter. Government offices have routinely rejected my perfect, readable photocopies simply because a younger, careless version of myself lost the original PRC exam rating sheet. The photocopy contains the exact same breakdown of my grades; the only things missing are a transparent watermark and a bureaucratic stamp on the back. Yet, ordinary citizens are denied services over a lack of "original" ink, while the Senate Impeachment Court spent days arguing over it.

Fortunately, common sense (and the Supreme Court's Original Document Rule) prevailed: under modern legal standards, a faithful digital printout or photocopy is treated as an original, provided nobody can prove the original was actively faked. The court chose to look at the text, not the watermark.

The defense hasn’t actually denied that the Vice President publicly ordered a hit contract on the President, the First Lady, and the House Speaker. Instead, they’ve constructed a narrative called "Operation Romanov"—a claimed deep-state plot to assassinate the Duterte family. They argue her death threats were merely a justified, defensive "line in the sand" to protect her bloodline.

But there is a massive structural flaw here: The defense is building a house on a shifting sandbar.

An impeachment court exists to try the explicit, recorded actions of the accused, not to chase ghosts. Operation Romanov has never been established as a factual reality. In fact, when the NBI invited the VP’s camp to present evidence of this plot, nobody showed up. Making a lethal public threat based on an unverified rumor is the geopolitical equivalent of shooting blindly into a shifting shadow. In the real world, firing a gun at a shadow will get you a criminal charge, not an acquittal.

The defense’s second narrative is a masterclass in psychological gymnastics: they claim that when she uttered those violent threats at 5:00 AM, she was speaking not as the Vice President, but strictly as a traumatized mother, sister, and daughter.

How exactly does that split-personality law work? Does a high-ranking official magically shed their constitutional duties, their taxpayer-funded salary, and their political accountability just because they decide to speak in the capacity of a protective relative, a basketball fan, or a Taylor Swift ticket collector?

A person is a singular entity. You cannot weaponize the immense institutional weight of your public office to command national attention, and then hide behind a family tree when the legal bill arrives. Even if a private citizen made those exact same threats on the street, it would still be a crime.

Finally, the defense argues that her threat was a justifiable, "unconventional deterrent."

Let’s apply this "deterrent" logic to real life: Imagine you hear a rumor that your neighbors want to bully your children. To protect your kids, you march out into the middle of the street and scream that you have hired professional criminals to liquidate the neighbor's entire household if your kids get a scratch.

Is that an effective deterrent? Maybe. Is it legal or justifiable? Absolutely not. In reality, you would be swiftly hauled into the barangay hall or thrown straight into a police precinct for grave threats. Suspicion of harassment does not grant anyone a license to threaten murder. Parental protection is a human instinct; it is not a legal get-out-of-jail-free card.

Furthermore, this is not an exercise of free speech. Express yourself by all means—write a bitter poem, play a mournful song, or paint a chaotic abstract canvas. But our constitutional liberties end the exact millisecond they collide with another human being's fundamental right to safety and survival.

If public death threats are codified as "free speech," our society crumbles. We would have people screaming lethal threats at each other on the streets, across jeepneys, over food court tables, and in the comment sections of every vlog. It is a terrifying, anarchic vision of the world.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I am going right back to ignoring this absolute circus. I have dishes to wash.

Matthew 10:26

“"So don’t be afraid of those who threaten you. For the time is coming when everything that is covered will be revealed, and all that is secret will be made known to all...”