A few weeks ago, Zaldy Co was a convenient villain.
He was the symbol of everything wrong with pork, politics, and patronage. The same DDS pages that label any critic a “yellow thief” had long painted him as part of the rotten class of dynasts and contractors. He fit the stereotype: wealthy, well-connected, and tied to enough public works controversies to make a COA auditor nervous.
Then he implicated President Marcos Jr.
And in an instant, the same ecosystem that demonized him declared him redeemed. His gaunt appearance became proof of sincerity. His words, previously suspect, were suddenly treated as truth. His motives, once mocked, were now noble. No gradual reconsideration. No re-examination of facts. Just a clean and sudden conversion from plunderer to prophet.
What changed? Certainly not Zaldy Co.
What changed was who he stood against.
The Co episode is not an isolated curiosity. It is the clearest recent example of the moral physics inside Duterte-aligned politics, where the axis of right and wrong tilts depending on a single question: “Are you with us or against us?” Everything else becomes negotiable.
This is the same mechanism that rehabilitated figures like Chavit Singson, Jinggoy Estrada, Bato dela Rosa, Bong Go, and Barzaga. It is how dynastic offspring such as Sara, Baste, Polong, and even minors like Kitty and Omar are treated as legitimate extensions of a political brand they did not build. In this worldview, the person’s character is secondary to the loyalty they signal.
Zaldy Co simply moved close enough, for a brief moment, to be treated as righteous.
To understand this, we must stop labeling the behavior as hypocrisy and examine it sociologically. Duterte’s political movement is not ideological. It is tribal. It rests not on consistent governance principles but on a system of loyalty markers. It resembles barangay patronage politics stretched across the nation.
When the patriarch becomes the center of morality, morality becomes relational.
If Duterte trusts someone, they are trustworthy.
If Duterte’s perceived enemies attack someone, that person becomes a victim.
And if a flawed ally stands against a bigger foe, his flaws are erased.
In this moral universe, Zaldy Co’s testimony did not become credible because of evidence. It became credible because it met the tribe’s emotional need. The contradictions do not weaken the movement. They reinforce it. The movement does not ask the follower to justify the flip. It only asks them to accept it.
This is why competence becomes optional for dynastic children.
This is why plunder becomes forgivable for loyalists.
This is why perjury becomes “politics” and corruption becomes “media spin.”
And this is why an unverified accusation becomes a revelation, but only when it strikes the right target.
There is a deeper danger. When political identity is built on loyalty rather than principle, the tribe must keep finding enemies to stay cohesive. The more fragile the inner logic becomes, the more aggressively it seeks outer threats. A movement that requires a villain to maintain unity cannot govern in good faith. It can only defend, deflect, divide.
But there is also an opportunity here.
Most Duterte supporters did not begin with loyalty to a dynasty. They began with a desire for order, justice, dignity, and a leadership style that felt direct and unpretentious. These are legitimate aspirations. They are not authoritarian impulses. They are unmet needs. The longing is understandable. The direction it took is where things went wrong.
If we want to help them step out of this moral maze, we must address the needs that pulled them in: a justice system that works, institutions that do not condescend, processes that feel predictable, leaders who do not pretend infallibility, and a politics that does not shame people for their frustrations. The way out is not to attack Duterte supporters but to offer something better than the strongman archetype that promised order and delivered instability.
Zaldy Co’s overnight redemption is not a mystery. It is a symptom. The cure is not humiliation but a country where people no longer feel they need a savior to feel safe — and where trust is earned by competence, not inherited through allegiance.