Fact: When Sara Duterte threw an international tantrum in November 2024 that she had hired a hitman to kill the Marcos couple, bloggers and social media personalities were present in the Zoom meet-up, as is the Duterte style of press conferences. One of them goes by the handle Princess Maui (real name Maui Vega Melanio), a deeply entrenched Duterte Diehard Supporter whose other alias is Princess DDS.
The self-styled princess asked Sara in that Zoom about a certain instigated plot to kill her, allegedly code-named Operation Romanov. Naturally, as is usual for DDS vloggers, her information was deemed by the NBI as unreliable. Invited by the NBI for questioning, the princess did not appear. Instead, her version of the Romanov only opened a Pandora’s box in the Sara impeachment trial.
Fact: It was earlier in January 2024 that Baste Duterte threatened President Marcos with a Romanov-style family massacre.
It is also a fact that when a Duterte threatens, it exposes their psychology of being obsessed with bloodbaths. For they have ruled their principality with exactly that: the bloodbath of eliminating critics, political enemies, and media people they do not like. They had an army to execute their kill orders, the Davao Death Squad.
Fact: At the time of her unhinged meltdown, Sara Duterte had a complement of 320 bodyguards, more than the president’s. The ego of a Duterte is truly larger than life. In contrast, a world leader like the Pope of the Holy See has only 265 security men: 135 Pontifical Swiss Guard soldiers and 130 police officers of the Vatican Gendarmerie Corps who handle close protection.
Sara’s “I do not recognize anybody above me” can be said by anyone in the dysfunctional Duterte family. It points to only one meaning: a Duterte rules as siga-sigâ and never by the rule of law. And because they are above the law, it is never about kamay na bakal (iron hand).
The Rodrigo Dutertes do not rule as authoritarians for the sake of being uncompromising with the law. On the contrary, they compromise public service for their own power and purse.
Their obsession for power is also their ignorance. Today, invoking the Romanovs makes it an even more despicable allusion.
To school Baste and their DDS army of vloggers:
In August 2000, the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church canonized Tsar Nicolas II, Tsarina Alexandra, their five children, and four loyal servants as “passion-bearers,” a designation that recognizes believers who face death with Christian humility and resignation following the example of Christ.
Much earlier, however, in 1981, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) had canonized them as new martyrs.
The previous Soviet authorities had demolished the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg where the massacre had taken place on July 17, 1918. Today, the Russian Orthodox Church built a pilgrimage church, the Church on Blood on the exact site of the Ipatiev House. The altar stands over the execution site.
Baste Duterte, all bluster and boastfulness like his father and siblings, knows next to nothing about the Romanov murders recognized as Russian Orthodox martyrdom. They might not even know that killing the Marcoses not for their accountability with the Filipino people but only because they, the Dutertes, want to be in national power again, might boomerang on them as Bolshevik cold blood murderers.
After all, aren’t they already known internationally as a family of murderers? Isn’t Duterte vendetta their unmistakable trademark by now?
Link to the interview with Davao City Mayor Baste Duterte by Alvin Zarsate, Alvin and Tourism blog.
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
