We’ve been drowning in content about the Duterte-allied Senate majority’s production of probably the worst soap opera ever (complete with B-movie level acting!), and don’t get me wrong, I enjoy it as much as the next person on this side of democracy. But beyond the laughter that memes provide (and this can be a bottomless pit, yes?), and the endless distress and disgust that this ongoing power trip of the Duterte majority bloc is giving us, I am also breathing a sigh of relief.
This is the first time in a long long time that those of us on the side of democracy and justice have been on the same page. Fully, on that one page, no ifs and buts, no bickering among ourselves, foregoing — at least for now — where we stand across the political divides. Finally, we have decided that this side, this one side, is the side we are on.
This could be, of course, the social media algorithm doing its job, but I think it is also, this time around, the pro-Duterte propaganda working in our favor.
The Script
All this time, Vice President Sara Duterte has said there is a script (“As early as May 11 2024, may script na sila”, she told her followers) purportedly written by the Marcos administration and the Romualdez Congress that had no premise and conclusion but her downfall. And as with all Duterte allegations this has been repeated and pushed incessantly by her propagandists, including the noisiest of the Duterte allies in Congress and the Senate, through every kind of digital content.
Of course, that script that the Vice President speaks of could exist — a script is but part of any communications strategy after all. But what this repeated reference to a “script” has done is allow us to see with more clarity the Duterte script. The narrative that the President is “bangag”; the notion that he doesn’t do any work at all; the insistence that the Marcos-Romualdez side are out to stay in power longer than 2028; the opinion that nation is worse off now than it was during the Duterte years.
This script of the Duterte side has been repeated, rehashed, revived, recoded since 2023, when Duterte followers started making themselves distinct from Marcos loyalists, and until they celebrated Sara’s complete disengagement from the BBM government in 2024. The RAGE Coalition, recently established, is nothing more but a repetition of what Duterte propagandists have been saying all this time, as it is an expansion pack of all the anti-government content of the Duterte siblings since their father was brought to the Hague to face his Crimes Against Humanity.
It is also why there is no believing Imee Marcos, as supported by Alan Peter Cayetano, when she insists that the Duterte-allied Senators sought the Senate leadership because of a purported convening of the Constitutional Assembly (ConAss). The no election scenario is something that Duterte propaganda has been hitting the Marcos administration with since early 2025, as echoed by no less than the old man Duterte himself. It’s a part of the script that’s long been written, and too often repeated, it has ceased to be believable. Besides, it was Duterte himself who was pushing for Con Ass early into his presidency in 2016, and in 2019 even threatened us with Rev Gov, a revolutionary government — so when it was their Tatay, it was okay? But pushed by anyone else, it is unacceptable?
Yes, it is said that a lie repeated many times becomes truth. I think what the Duterte allied Senators and propagandists fail to realize is that coming from them, a lie repeated many times just transforms into nothing more but a propaganda video filled with malicious insinuations, baseless opinion, and tsismis — sometimes straight from Imee Marcos herself (if not PGMN).
The Chaos
On May 11, the moment Bato Dela Rosa appeared in the Senate and decided to run like a guilty man up multiple flights of stairs, even falling and hurting a finger or two, and then blaming the two NBI agents who purportedly were running after him — the Duterte Senate majority set itself up for this chaos.
After all, what we wanted to watch that day was the overwhelming majority of 256 members of the House of Representatives deciding to send the Articles of Impeachment Against Vice President Sara Duterte to the Senate for an impeachment trial.
Articles of impeachment
Instead, what we had to watch was this former police chief, the same one who dared institutions to arrest him, who declared that kids who die in drug busts are “collateral damage” because “shit happens” — we had to watch this man, who defended the killing of innocents, running like a scared, spineless man, and then demanding that he be respected as a Senator of the Republic when he reached the Senate Floor.
We saw Cayetano insisting that they put to a vote the Senate Presidency while there were 13 of them on his side, a sure win. Padilla declared Dela Rosa a “hero”. On videos we see Joel Villanueva and Jinggoy Estrada — both with flood control allegations — gleefully celebrating Dela Rosa’s return. Duterte propaganda was on overdrive with their influencers and operators declaring acquittal for Sara in the impeachment trial, and a sure win in 2028 — something that Imee Marcos would repeat in an interview with Karen Davila over a week later.
By May 13, with the media coverage of the shots fired at the Senate keeping us abreast of the situation outside Cayetano’s office, where the Duterte Senators were holed up in a caucus and later appeared in the dark declaring that they were “under attack”, there was no reason to believe them at all.
Why believe any of them who let Robin Padilla create drama in the Senate the day before, insisting that he had been shouted at by Kiko Pangilinan (he was not – Kiko raised his voice to be heard above the interruptions), then refusing a handshake and insisting on an ethics complaint. On the afternoon of the 13th, the Padilla drama continued as Duterte-allied lawyer Jimmy Bondoc declared on Facebook that there was a fistfight in the Senate lounge, and promptly let his comments section go wild with speculation that it was Padilla and Pangilinan.
As the chaos in the Senate unfolded before our eyes, thanks to media coverage, the Duterte Senators decided the right thing to do was to speak to the public through their Facebook accounts, never mind that it made little sense, seeing as they were doing this 20 minutes after the last shots were heard and, as it turns out, the Senate Sergeant-At-Arms Aplasca, along with his men in the OSAA, were firing at … no one. There was no danger to the Senators, but the Duterte-noisemaker Kiko Barzaga declared: “It’s an attempted Senate assassination!”
The chaos is the doing of this Duterte majority and their allies — and we know this because this is what they have been leading up to, exactly what they have been wanting to be able to do since the Marcos-Duterte split. They’ve wanted to unseat BBM, and have Sara Duterte take over this government. And the way to do that has been to build a narrative that says this is an administration that is deliberately not doing its work, from the Vice President’s declaration that “hindi siya nagtatrabaho”, referring to BBM, to the long-drawn out content about the President and the First Lady being “bangag”; from the worst of their propagandists calling on Filipinos “na lumaban” because they are doing their content at purported risk to their lives — even when there is no proof of these threats, and they are all free to speak and are alive, unlike so many of Duterte’s critics who were killed or illegally detained during his term.
Civil Society
This is what the Duterte propagandists and allies have failed to consider: that while we were quiet for what? the first four years of the BBM administration, we were so not because we agreed with them, but because we were one of many things.
Maybe we were suffering from PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder, given six years of a violent, misogynist leadership that was Rodrigo Duterte, and we just needed to take a break. Maybe we had turned apathetic, given Robredo’s massive loss to Marcos in 2022 and the realization that the narrative of “pagbaba sa laylayan” was more elitist than it was kind or compassionate. Maybe we just wanted to live in peace, as calmly and quietly as possible, do our own thing, live our own lives, given that BBM as President has turned out to be nothing like Duterte, and is, in fact, more like living under PNoy.
And yes, we are in a time of unimaginable crises. But we also lived through Covid-19 when we all could’ve died, not just because there was no vaccine for it and few could understand the pandemic; but primarily because we had Duterte as President, who decided that the way to handle the crisis was to sacrifice science (remember Sinovac?) and basic rights, in favor of violent lockdowns, police presence, and militarization.
And so between the script of the Duterte allies, now on full display and being staged on public funds in the august halls of the Senate, with the obvious goal of keeping the Dutertes in power, by hook, crook, and every content bucket imaginable, I think civil society is now finally waking up and realizing that it’s time. Not just to talk about the 2028 elections, but everything in the present that’s leading up to it. Without meaning to and despite our differences, the Duterte side has pushed us all to meet (finally!) on the same page.
The goal is to stay on it, and keep at it. And find a common candidate for 2028. We start by keeping track of this serye.
