Did recent developments in the Senate trigger the Thucydides Trap? Of course not. The Duterte camp can hardly be called a power in ascendance that is threatening the administration of Marcos Jr. However, there is no doubt that it wants to displace the established, ruling regime, or at least prevent its proxy from retaining the seat in Malacañang in the next presidential election.
Although it’s still two years away, it would appear that both sides have already taken off their gloves for a slugfest until one of them gets knocked out. Now don’t ask me why I’m using a boxing analogy when everybody knows I know nothing about the sport. Yes, I’m ignorant about its mechanics but I am quite familiar with its endgame.
In sports, like in politics, there will always be a loser and there will always be a winner. A tie can sometimes happen but it never lasts since the point of the game is to have a victor. No one decides to run for an elective post so he or she can share it with someone else.
And so the scene is set.
The Senate has officially convened as an impeachment court against Vice President Sara Duterte. However, it is dominated by her allies following last week’s “coup.” No wonder then that cynics out there would have already jumped to the conclusion that the vice president would keep her post. Not that I’d blame them.
But did the Duterte camp overplay its hand with regards to the recent power grab in the Senate? How long do you think before it forces the Marcos administration to use resources at its fingertips without impunity?
However, I don’t see that happening. I think Marcos Jr. is too conscious about what history has written about his family. I truly believe he just wants to clear the Marcos name. That way, he will leave a different legacy. But Marcos Jr. is human. And as a human, he doesn’t have infinite patience. The noise, the ruckus must be deafening for someone who actually controls the game. He has the power to make all of that go away. That he has chosen not to wage it says a lot about his self-control.
But before I continue, I am not a political analyst and I don’t pretend to be one. I call it as I see it, based on my understanding of human psychology that I learned having read all of Agatha Christie’s books. Yes, like the Belgian detective Hercules Poirot, I use my little gray cells to try and get to the bottom of the characters involved.
It’s not a walk in the park, but it’s no uphill battle either. Philippine politics has become so formulaic and the characters in them have become so two-dimensional, it’s like a poorly-written script. Unfortunately, it’s what the voting masses lap up. And because they make up the majority, then the cycle repeats itself.
How can you expect them to learn from history when history has no relevance in their daily existence? It won’t put food on their table, put a roof over their heads or give them a decent education, although I’m not saying that the current setup has provided any safety nets either. But, at the end of the day, it provides them with a spectacle. The kind that makes them ignore the rumblings in their stomachs.
Politics has become the new opiate of the masses.
And now I find myself spewing platitudes. I don’t normally edit my thoughts. To overcome the hurdle of a writer’s block early on in my career, I decided to write down everything that comes to mind. Call it stream of consciousness writing. Sometimes I get to my point quickly, but then there are those times when I meander or divagate before getting to the crux of the matter.
In the books, Poirot always unmasks the murderer at the end. He may go about it in a circuitous manner with a lot of deflections, but he always finds the culprit. And we won’t be surprised that the identity would surprise us. In fact, we expect that to happen. Otherwise, it would not be an Agatha Christie mystery.
But as I said, our local characters are strictly two-dimensional. The boring reality is that the players here lack the imagination to go off-script. The cynics may be right: she will not be impeached. The grandest illusion in this poorly written script is making you expect a twist that was never coming.