19/05/2026
CTTO
𝟏𝟑 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐚 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐨𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩
15 MAy 2026 | Read time: 9 minutes
Much closer to home, Corazon Aquino and about 40 opposition members in the Batasan Pambansa in 1983 defied for three years the formidable Marcos dictatorship to eventually topple it.
The Marcos regime and the United States Deep State has masterfully created a frenzy first against Vice President Sara Duterte and more recently against Sen. Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa.
Ignore fake polls like that done by OCTA Research. Duterte is a shoo-in for the presidency in 2028, with an authentic pollster, WR Numero, showing in its March survey that 36 percent of Filipinos will vote for her, a commanding lead over Raffy Tulfo’s 19 percent. That support will ratchet up when Sara defeats the impeachment plot against her, which now appears certain.
Six of the senators who have been Duterte’s staunch supporters (Alan Peter Cayetano, Imee Marcos, Rodante Marcoleta, Robinhood Padilla, B**g Go and Dela Rosa) united with seven others, who listened to their conscience to wrest control of the Senate from Marcos’ minions, whom he ordered to convict Sara “forthwith” in an impeachment trial. These seven are Pia Cayetano, Francis Escudero, Jinggoy Estrada, Loren Legarda, Joel Villanueva, and the Villar siblings Mark and Camille.
Marcos has exercised de facto dictatorship of government with his tight hold over the House of Representatives, as a result of his cousin, then-House speaker Martin Romualdez’s skill in diverting government funds and using these to buy their loyalty, his and his wife’s command of mainstream media (especially the three main broadsheets), the Left, the Senate before May 11, headed by his secret minion Vicente Sotto III, and recently, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) all too willing to be his Gestapo.
Only the 13 senators and the Supreme Court stand in the way of this greedy clan’s drive to hold on to power. With his success in getting the House of Representatives and mainstream media to do his bidding, the 13 senators are now democracy’s sole force to stop the junior’s version of his father’s Martial Law.
Dry run
The deployment of NBI agents, armed with Armalite assault weapons, to the Senate last Monday to undertake the arrest of Senator Dela Rosa was both a dry run for a future assault on the Senate when Marcos closes it down as his father did in 1972, and to desensitize people from the coming shock of armed soldiers in the august chamber.
The NBI agents directed by Melvin Matibag, handpicked by Marcos and put on the post only last Feb. 26, were undeterred after being blocked in their attempt last Monday to whisk away Dela Rosa to the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) dungeons in the Netherlands in order to reduce the ranks of the pro-democracy bloc in the Senate.
On Wednesday evening, about 40 agents attempted to gain entry to the chamber by removing a door at the GSIS portion of the building and entered the Senate premises to arrest Senator Dela Rosa. They were foiled after the Senate’s security staff discovered them and fired warning shots, after which they scampered away like rats. Strangely or not, all of the pro-Marcos senators had left the premises before the incident occurred. Most of the pro-democracy senators were there, having a meeting.
One NBI agent detained at the Senate after the botched attempt at kidnapping Dela Rosa said (translated from Filipino): “Our mission was to get Senator Bato at all costs, regardless of who gets hurt or killed.”
This statement is chilling, and it is not an exaggeration that the pro-democracy senators’ lives are in danger, and so is our democracy.
One scenario would involve another attempt to take Dela Rosa, which results in a firefight that kills Dela Rosa together with senators often with him like Sen. Robinhood Padilla. Marcos declares a state of emergency and assumes “revolutionary powers,” which means the junking of the 1987 Constitution. He demolishes the Senate and declares the current House of Representatives, which has proven to be under his thumb, as both a unilateral legislative chamber and the assembly to draft a new constitution — through which he becomes prime minister. To further strengthen their loyalty to him, Marcos promises them that the new constitution will give the current House another three-year term. Marcos has the billions of pesos raised through the flood control scam and the standby-appropriations scheme to pull off this operation.
The military establishment supports him, as there is no organized armed group to oppose him, with even the communists being part of his plot. The business elite and the middle-class acquiesce to Marcos ‘coup, believing his propaganda that his actions are necessary to respond to the ever-worsening economic crisis in the wake of the Middle East conflict.
Media
One thing that has emboldened Marcos is that he has put the mainstream media and even a section of broadcast under his thumb, either buying them off or relying on their incompetence. (Social media, though, has maintained the torch of bold and independent journalism, the counterpart, but more powerful this time, of the “mosquito press” that fought Marcos dictatorship in its last years.)
“The shame of the nation” was the brutal, unfair headline of the editorial of this newspaper, referring to the Senate. That line was echoed in a column in the Yellowest of papers, “Shameless. The current crop of senators has dragged us to the gutter.”
Such is the power of propaganda. Reality has been turned on its head. The institution that has acted as the last bastion of democracy is being portrayed as a “shameless” body.
One good guide in evaluating different contending views is the reality uncovered in the 1846 book “The German Ideology,” which has become more or less the orthodox explanation, but often forgotten, in explaining views in a society.
Use that insight in the current controversy, and the truth just leaps out: The claim that Sara is corrupt, that she has to be removed, that Senator Dela Rosa should be turned over to the International Criminal Court are the ideas of the ruling power since 2022 — the Marcos regime.
Why? President Marcos Jr. is terrified at the prospect of a Sara presidency, as he delivered her father to the International Criminal Court, whose trial could last for years, and therefore could mean the death there of a frail 80-year-old man. There is much evidence, and testimony, of his administration’s corruption, involving himself and his family. Under a Duterte administration, it is certain that he and his immediate family, as well his cousin ex- speaker Romualdez, will spend their lives in jail for plunder.
US
The US also fears a Sara presidency, as this would mean — unless she does a volte-face in her views of the US — the end of the Philippines’ vassalage to the superpower, and the immediate removal of its nine military bases. The importance of these bases has become more strategic in the wake of the current Middle East war, as these would allow the US military forward bases close to China in case it decides to defend Taiwan from being taken over by that emerging superpower.
The US, with convicted coup plotter Antonio Trillanes IV, had worked since Aquino III’s presidency on the plan to get the ICC to try Duterte for his war against drugs and crime, and to throw him in jail. As soon as the alliance between Sara and Marcos (which gave him the presidency) ended in 2023, Marcos’ cousin, Romualdez at the House, went about financing the plot.
They recruited the Left, its nongovernmental organizations and party-lists for this, who were most willing as Duterte had undertaken an intense campaign to militarily and politically dismantle the Communist Party and its New People’s Army. The leftists provided the warm bodies to demonize Duterte in numerous street rallies and House hearings, and even got their top legal cadres such as Kristina Conti to fabricate “evidence” against the elder Duterte, and disclosed only recently that Senator Dela Rosa and other top police officials that undertook the war against drugs.
The Left actually already has a playbook and experience fabricating human rights abuses against a former president in a foreign court. Ironically, this was from their operation to indict Marcos’ father for widespread human rights abuses during his dictatorship in a foreign venue, the US. They hugely succeeded in doing so, even getting a US court to order compensation for Marcos’ alleged human rights victims. As I have exposed in several columns, these victims were mostly Communist Party cadres, New People’s Army guerrillas and armed Muslim separatists who were even given compensation by our government, amounting from P500,000 to P1 million, as in the case of the former CPP head Jose Ma. Sison and his wife Juliet.
The NBI’s armed attacks to arrest Dela Rosa have backfired in a very big way. This will galvanize the 13 pro-democracy senators into a formidable force, and several other senators will soon join them to be a super majority to end the Marcos regime. Public sympathy has moved toward Sara Duterte, and the hysterical mob against her will stop by themselves, realizing they’ve been fooled by Marcos and the Left.
On Monday, I debunk each and every argument that it is wrong for Dela Rosa to evade the ICC warrant.
Ctto:
Rob Rances
