By Robert B. Roque, Jr.
“Where are the clowns, send in the clowns…” What a song of tragic comedy — of sorrow and darkness behind painted smiles. I used to hear it on the radio. Today, it plays out as news.
On a totally unrelated matter, which some might consider purely coincidental, this corner begs to ask what business provincial strongman Chavit Singson has in picking fights with President Marcos and former House Speaker Martin Romualdez.
I mean, he’s bred in the same dynastic comfort and shadowed by a past that whispers of shady deals and gambling exposes. He should have taken a hint during the first Trillion Peso March that the boos that greeted him were not beckoning him to lecture the nation on moral renewal.
Yes, government rot exists in the form of systemic corruption and ineptness in leadership, but what’s Chavit really after? To call for mass action while daring the President to a debate merely drums up a spectacle none of us needs right now.
Who wants to watch that debate in the first place? For Malacañang to dignify the dare is a pathetic embarrassment. An administration tasked with correcting wrongs in its own time should not trade barbs with a heckler unless there’s a certain admission that they’re all just clowns arguing over who owns the circus.
Do we nod at the US?
Last January 3 could be read as a triumph for the United States, when it launched a military operation in Venezuela that resulted in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro. While Washington justified its action as necessary to address corruption, authoritarian rule, and threats to regional stability, all of it could also be read as a day of infamy.
Framed by US President Donald Trump as a defense of democracy and accountability, the move was carried out unilaterally, outside multilateral mechanisms, and against a sovereign state already isolated by sanctions and diplomatic pressure.
What’s dangerous about this US action is not merely the fate of Maduro or the many, very real sins of the Venezuelan regime. It is the precedent it sets, as stated by Leila de Lima. She stopped cautiously at the thought of how that world’s leading democracy has reverted to the logic of force, of “might makes right.”
I see her point, because if we follow that context, we are also hollowing out the very rules-based order democracy claims to defend. When a superpower abducts the leader of a weaker state in the name of moral necessity, it blurs the line between enforcement and aggression, between law and power.
For Filipinos who cherish democracy, reflexive support for an ally will not do. The Philippines is a small, vulnerable state in a contested region, reliant not on force but on international law to defend its rights in the West Philippine Sea. If we applaud selective violations of sovereignty today, we weaken our own moral footing tomorrow — especially when confronting China’s coercion.
Other voices echo this pause for thought, and this includes critics of Venezuela. They ask: Is this how democracy speaks, by bypassing multilateral institutions and normalizing unilateral force? Again, this is not an argument against our alliance with the US, but an argument for historical clarity and democratic discussion.
In the end, the Philippines cannot just be expected to nod as Trump turns at every corner of the world. The democracy that both our nations value with our lives cannot be defended by methods that make every small nation more afraid of its protectors than of its adversaries.
- * *
SHORT BURSTS. For comments or reactions, email firingline@ymail.com or tweet @Side_View via X app (formerly Twitter). Read current and past issues of this column at https://www.thephilbiznews.com