💡 Trivia The Loser's interview

The president’s YouTube interview with Ka Tunying the other day showed Ferdinand Marcos Jr., as a businessman put it, “stunned, unable to understand what happened. I really didn't expect he would show such weakness, a call for friendship, a call to not fight; in effect he allowed (Navotas Rep.) Toby Tiangco to say the move to remove someone from office was wrong.”

Indeed, Marcos’ statements in the interview reminded me of a fight in our school days when a bully challenged a smaller kid, but was immediately knocked down with a single punch. He got up without hesitation, extended his hand, and said “Let's be friends now.” The one who was picked on in this case is of course Vice President Sara Duterte, against whom Marcos threw everything in the past two years. He ordered a special group in Congress to look into her for wrongdoing, tried to get her removed as head of the education department, pushed to have her removed from office, and even tried to have her father kidnapped and jailed in a foreign country. Sara, in effect, clearly won against Marcos through the recent senatorial elections — despite some people’s silly attempts to say it wasn't so.

He said “Let's be friends now” very clearly: “I don’t want trouble. I want to get along with everyone. It's better.” This is just like that school bully, standing up after being knocked out and telling the person he picked on: “I don’t want trouble.”

He says he doesn’t want trouble. But through his cousin, House Speaker Martin Romualdez, who owes his position entirely to Marcos for many reasons (like all past speakers), he got Congress to vote to remove Sara from office. And as the top boss of the Philippine National Police, did he not order the police and other officials under his control to forcefully take Sara’s father onto a plane, kidnapped and thrown in jail at The Hague to be tried in a foreign court — perhaps for years? Yet Marcos has the nerve to claim he had nothing to do with Sara being removed from office, and that there is just “this process” that has to be followed? Marcos’ election campaign manager Tiangco in the past several days has been saying the same thing, of course only now when it's clear that Sara, because of the elections, has enough senators on her side to say she’s innocent.

Tiangco’s explanation makes his boss’ image even worse. If Marcos didn't want Sara removed from office — which caused a major conflict against him in the past two years, and for which his government spent ₱24 billion to bribe the congressmen — then it's not him, but Romualdez, who became a congressman of a small district with only 181,000 votes, who is leading this country of 68 million voters. That certainly isn't a democracy.

The new Senate could even immediately throw out the complaint to remove Sara from office, even before a trial. They could pass a resolution saying the House’s papers are faulty, since even Tiangco and then-deputy speaker Duke Frasco had publicly said that the House leaders offered “benefits”—amounting to ₱150 million in aid and small building projects—for each district of a congressman who signed the complaint to remove Sara. With the country showing huge support for Sara through the elections, with many representatives who were against Sara even losing their seats—such as Manila 6th District Rep. Bienvenido Abante and Laguna’s Dan Fernandez—will congressmen insist that the complaint is real and that the trial should happen?

The Tunying interview itself was a mistake as it showed Marcos as a loser, losing his mind—hardly the strong, brave leader that former president Rodrigo Duterte is showing himself to be, even if thrown in jail as if he’s a common criminal. Did Tunying convince Marcos that he would “fix his image” the way he thinks he did when after a period of bad news, he interviewed the troubled first lady last year?

Sara, on the other hand, in her video interviews, showed defiance and determination even as she smiled charmingly at her supporters: That’s what people want a leader to be, not someone who complains. “I want bloodbath,” said Sara, claiming that she would overpower those trying to bring charges against her. I wonder who, besides Leila de Lima—who thinks the trial would make her famous—would continue to volunteer to bring charges against Sara now that it’s clear she has enough votes to be found innocent.

Marcos told Tunying: “I’ve been talking to my CEO friends—the Taipans—and I’ve been joking how easier it is to run a big company than a government.” His friends would have told him if they were honest enough: “Stupid. If you were a leader and a good manager, you could have run the government as ‘easy’ as we run our companies. And you were also just too lazy, spending too much time at parties and trips abroad.”

Indeed, the presidency doesn’t even seem to have a proper way of being managed. There’s no clear line of command that Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin—the “little president” in most other administrations—had to send an important memo (one about a meeting with a survey taker a month before the elections who showed bad public opinion results) to not just a simple assistant secretary but the appointments secretary.

Marcos in the interview seemed to be out of touch with reality, claiming that the reason his candidates didn't win was that his government’s achievements weren't being told to the people. But he himself couldn’t list such achievements. He claimed he was able to offer the public rice at ₱20 per kilogram, because of a good harvest in 2024. That is fake news: the Philippine Statistics Authority had reported that unmilled rice, or rice before it’s processed, dropped to a four-year low of 19.09 million metric tons in 2024. The only reason this government could offer a limited amount of rice at ₱20 per kg is that it is paying for the difference in market price of ₱29 per kg, using government money amounting to ₱12 billion.

Marcos in the interview appeared to be mistaken, claiming that his government has been focusing on long-term projects whose impact the public won’t feel for years, even “after my term.” But the only example he could give was the subway project in Metro Manila. But this project was first planned when it was included in the 1977 Metro Manila Transport, Land Use and Development Planning Project supported by the World Bank, but it wasn't built because of concerns about flooding in areas like Marikina, Cainta, Rosario and others.

It was almost forgotten—with governments instead building Light Railway Transit lines—until in 2016 the Duterte government brought the project back under its Build, Build, Build building program. The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) approved the project in September 2017, with Duterte, as NEDA chairman, giving the final approval shortly after.

Money for the project came from loans from Japan, with the first part signed in March 2018. The project’s total cost is around ₱488.5 billion, with most of it ρáíd for by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA, the group that provides development money for the government of Japan) and the rest by the Philippine government. Six Japanese companies were chosen as project advisors in late 2018, making sure there was technical knowledge and oversight. The start of construction ceremony took place in Valenzuela City in February 2019, officially marking the beginning of building.

What a liar this president is.

Credits: Roberto Tiglao