Solon hails Marcos move to reach out, reconcile with Dutertes
President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr (L) and Vice President Sara Duterte (PHOTOS: Official Facebook pages og Bongbong Marcos and Inday Sara Duterte)
MANILA, Philippines — President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.’s openness to reconciling with the Duterte family — who has engaged in a word war with him — is something expected of a dignified person, San Juan City Rep. Ysabel Zamora said on Wednesday.
“I believe that the President is a very amiable, polite, and level headed person. He is not vengeful and is always dignified. That he is open to reconcile with the Duterte family is something that we should expect from him,” Zamora, a member of the House of Representatives’ prosecution team for the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte, said in a statement.
“Support for the impeachment didn’t spell loss for candidates. Majority of the congressmen who supported the impeachment and were up for reelection won. Alyansa as well as Liberal candidates won as senators,” she added.
READ: Does Marcos want to make peace with Dutertes? ‘Yes, I don’t like conflicts’
Marcos has said that the impeachment complaint against Duterte has reached the Senate already, and that he will not interfere in the process.
READ: Marcos on Sara Duterte impeachment trial: Let process take its course
Marcos and Duterte ran under the same umbrella during the 2022 presidential race, dubbed the Uniteam, winning by a landslide.
In May 2023, however, Duterte resigned from Lakas-CMD, the political party of Marcos’ cousin, House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez.
Political veterans like late Albay 1st District Rep. Edcel Lagman believed that Duterte’s resignation was related to the House’s decision to remove the senior deputy speakership role from former president and Pampanga 2nd District Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Duterte has long considered Arroyo as an ally and a mentor.
During the budget season in 2023, in preparation for the 2024 budget, the House decided not to give Duterte’s offices — the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) — any confidential fund (CF) allocations due to questions from groups who said that such funding should only be reserved to agencies with a surveillance and security function.
After the House removed the CF allocations, Duterte’s relatives — her father former president Rodrigo Duterte and her brother Davao City Mayor Sebastian Duterte, started criticizing Marcos and accusing him of being a drug addict.
In January 2024, Marcos fired back, saying that former president Duterte’s rants may have been brought by the fentanyl — a potent opioid drug that Duterte has admitted to using for the pain in his shoulder.
READ: ‘It’s the fentanyl,’ Marcos says after former president Duterte tags him ‘drug addict’
Then in April 2024, Marcos’ wife, First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos said she has started to snub the Vice President after seeing her laugh while former president Duterte was claiming that Marcos was a drug addict.
Vice president Duterte eventually resigned as education secretary.
Several congressional investigations followed soon after, revealing alleged irregularities in how OVP and DepEd spent its CF.
The investigations’ findings — along with Duterte’s statements that she has talked to someone about killing Marcos, Araneta-Marcos, and Romualdez if she gets killed — eventually led to the filing of impeachment complaints against her.
On February 5, 215 House lawmakers filed and verified a fourth complaint against Duterte, effectively impeaching her.
READ: House impeaches Sara Duterte, fast-tracking transmittal to Senate
The articles of impeachment were immediately transmitted to the Senate, as the 1987 Constitution requires a trial to start forthwith if at least one-thirds of all House members — in this case, just 102 out of 306 — have signed and endorsed the petition.
However, trial has yet to start as the articles of impeachment were not forwarded to the Senate plenary before session ended on February 5 — which means that Congress would have to reconvene first after the election season, or through a special session to discuss the matter.
Senate President Francis Escudero believes it will now be up to the 20th Congress to decide on Duterte’s impeachment.
Latest developments however have unraveled, with two incoming lawmakers — former senator and ML party-list’s Leila de Lima, and human rights lawyer and Akbayan party-list’s Chel Diokno — joining the prosecution team.
Zamora said she is excited about the inclusion of de Lima and Diokno, two legal luminaries.
