In many parts of the country, women in political families function as stabilizers during times of transition. Term limits? No problem—a wife or daughter takes the reins until the incumbent is eligible to return. Public backlash? A matriarch’s charm and community work soften the blow. In this way, women serve as both buffers and bridges, preserving power while keeping it seemingly palatable to the public.

This is not just about loyalty or support. It’s a calculated, strategic role. These women organize campaigns, negotiate alliances with other powerful clans, and mobilize local networks to achieve their goals. They often take the lead in community initiatives, portraying the family as benevolent and engaged — even when these acts are carefully curated PR moves. Their involvement goes far beyond symbolism. They are kingmakers, campaign managers, and, at times, the ones actually pulling the strings.

The rise of female political figures from dynastic families has even been interpreted by some as a form of progress for women in leadership. After all, more women in office should be good for democracy, right? But here lies the dilemma. When a woman’s path to power is only open through bloodlines or marriage, it doesn’t expand democratic participation; it reinforces exclusivity. It’s not a crack in the glass ceiling — it’s a revolving door in an elite club.

In the Philippines, where over 70% of Congress is composed of members from political dynasties, this dynamic raises important questions. Are these women breaking barriers — or are they being strategically deployed to sustain political monopolies under the guise of gender representation? In many cases, it’s both. And that’s where the nuance lies.

The challenge for voters and reform advocates is not to dismiss these women outright, but to critically assess the structures that allow only a select few to wield influence — whether male or female. True gender representation means creating political space for women from all walks of life, not just those with dynastic capital.

So while these women may operate without formal recognition, their impact is undeniable. They are not mere figureheads; they are tacticians, caretakers of legacy, and, often, the family’s most trusted political strategist. In the high-stakes world of Philippine politics, where survival often means adaptation, women in dynasties have proven themselves to be the ultimate political survivors.

But survival is not the same as transformation. If the goal is a more inclusive and representative democracy, then the conversation must go beyond the surnames on the ballot. Because sometimes, the most powerful person in the room isn’t the one in office — it’s the one who helped put them there.

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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

I will try even just for a moment to set aside candor, temper my instinctive outrage, and muffle what would otherwise be a very raw reaction to this latest development in the flood-control saga. I will attempt, as journalists are trained to do, to give institutions the benefit of the doubt, to assume rational process, legal prudence, and good faith.

That effort lasts exactly up to this point. Here, where I wish the Department of Justice (DOJ) would pause, measure itself, and conclude that it either misinterpreted marching orders from Malacañang or is just plain stupid.

Are we seriously being asked right now to accept that Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) executives Henry Alcantara and Roberto Bernardo are now being primed for something dangerously close to hero status in the biggest flood-control heist in recent memory?

WHAT???

Witness protection — as most laymen understand it, and I am no lawyer — exists to pry open conspiracies by sparing the least guilty. The small fry. The expendable cogs. Not the men who allegedly swam in kickbacks so large they now need forklifts to “restitute” them.

Why did the DOJ even consider this? Alcantara alone has returned P181 million. Add Gerard Opulencia’s P80 million, Bernardo’s P35 million, and contractor Sally Santos’ P20 million, and we’re told P316 million has been “voluntarily” handed back. That is not pocket change. That is not incidental participation. That is prima facie evidence of deep, sustained, and profitable involvement.

Yet Acting Justice Secretary Fredderick Vida would like us to believe these are the least guilty — conveniently discharged from criminal liability “for particular cases,” as long as they sing on cue and don’t recant. It’s a legal magic trick: turn principal actors into prosecution props, and hope the public applauds the illusion.

Is this the prize for returning nearly P200 million? So, this now becomes their ticket to witness protection — and what message does that deliver to the bureaucracy? That if you steal big enough, then when you get caught, you might just be able to afford buying yourself immunity!

Worse, the DOJ’s selectivity raises more questions than answers. Two other DPWH officials were denied state-witness status, but the basis for this decision cannot be disclosed. Translation: trust us. We’ve weighed the scales — behind a curtain.

And looming over all this is Malacañang’s “marching order” to crack down on corruption, even at the cost of economic jitters. Fine. But if this is what accountability looks like — the biggest collectors spared, while the public is promised justice later — then this campaign risks becoming another carefully choreographed performance.

Flood-control projects were supposed to hold back disasters. Instead, they became a cash cow for officials, contractors, and politicians alike. If the DOJ truly wants reform, it should remember this: witnesses don’t cleanse a crime. Convictions do.

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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

“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.

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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

And so this is 2026… not quite the hopeful refrain of a new year unfolding, but a pause heavy with questions: what have we done, and what has been done to us? For many Filipinos, the turn of the calendar feels less like renewal and more like reckoning — politically bruised, economically cautious, and socially worn down by a year that tested both patience and trust.

That mood is captured starkly in the latest year-end survey by PAHAYAG, the public opinion initiative of PUBLiCUS Asia, Inc., with Vox Opinion Research as its commissioned arm — an outfit that has tracked Filipino sentiment since 2017 and knows when discontent is not just noise, but a pattern.

Nearly six in ten Filipinos, or 58%, say they are pessimistic about the country’s direction as 2026 approaches. While that figure is an improvement from the bleak 70% recorded the previous quarter, it remains significantly worse than the 49% registered a year ago. Optimism has ticked up to 42%, driven largely by better expectations for household finances and the economy — but even that remains below last year’s levels. The numbers surely mirror a nation far from reassured.

After all, 2025 was not short on reasons to worry. A trillion-peso flood control scandal exploded into public view, triggering resignations, flight risks, and a deepening sense that accountability remains selective. The IMF downgraded the country’s growth outlook, while economic expansion slowed to its weakest pace in four years. High-stakes political shocks followed: impeachment proceedings against the Vice President, plunder and graft complaints, and the arrest of a former president on an ICC warrant — events that would rattle even the most mature democracies.

Nature, too, showed no mercy. The Philippines was again named the world’s most disaster-prone country, battered by super typhoons, deadly earthquakes, and relentless flooding that displaced hundreds of thousands. PAGASA now warns of a wetter-than-average 2026 under La Niña — hardly comforting news for communities still rebuilding.

And yet, pessimism is not surrender. Filipinos have endured worse and endured together. There is resilience in the young who still believe, in workers here and abroad whose remittances keep the economy afloat, in public servants and private citizens who quietly do the right thing. The survey may measure doubt — but it also hints at resolve. Even after a bruising year, the country has not lost its capacity to rise.

Let me cite a specific example close to my heart: the passionate work done by my fellow members of the Manila Sampaguita Lions Club led by Club President Christian Munoz to spread joy and sustenance to 200 street dwellers in Malate, Manila.

For the fifth Christmas since 2021, our club’s feeding and gift-giving project for street dwellers was made possible again through a steady and generous donation from San Miguel Corporation.

The outreach activity, originally slated last December 10, hit a logistical snag that made it easy to shelve the effort. Christmas had already passed, but pessimism did not rule our hearts. The donations still arrived, and members still attended.

On a late-night convoy on December 29, ready-to-eat meals and bottled water made their way to families sleeping on sidewalks. The project was realized — not as a consolation act after the holidays — but as a deliberate gesture to usher the homeless into 2026 with something many had been denied all year: reassurance. Food that could last a few days, not just as a buffer against hunger, but a strong reminder that they had not been forgotten.

Perhaps this is how pessimism is truly countered… through quiet acts that reset someone’s outlook. For those street dwellers in Malate, at least, the Manila Sampaguita Lions and San Miguel Corporation may have done something remarkable: they may have crossed a few names off the list of Filipinos entering 2026 with dread and replaced it, even ever so briefly, with hope.

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I want to think young Congressman Leandro Leviste is straight as an arrow, and in the habit of putting himself out there in the naked light of social media to bare uncomfortable truths for the public good. He has certainly cast himself that way: emotional, candid, almost confessional, while narrating alleged attempts to buy his silence.

Leviste recently claimed that he was offered billions of pesos in additional classroom funding for his district in exchange for keeping quiet about questionable Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) budget documents. He said he withheld the papers for months due to pressure from a DPWH official, later breaking down as he expressed regret that former undersecretary Catalina Cabral was not made a state witness to expose the flood-control scandal. The performance was compelling. The framing was careful.

Then came a complication. DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon disclosed that Cabral herself had earlier told him that it was Leviste who demanded access to the files as early as September, and insisted they be saved onto his own flash drive. Leviste fired back, flatly accusing Dizon of lying, and warning that if attacked, he would expose what he holds — the so-called “Cabral files.”

This is where transparency blurs into brinkmanship. What began as a whistleblower’s tale now resembles a standoff of narratives, each wielding documents as a form of leverage. The public is left to wonder: were these files suppressed out of fear, or preserved as insurance? Was the timing driven by conscience — or by proficient political calculation?

That question is not trivial, especially given Leviste’s history. His wealth did not come from open-market competition or an enterprise built from the ground up. It came through legislation — via a solar franchise of extraordinary scope, later sold early and lucratively. Political capital, some say, was drawn directly from his senator-mom, who converted clean energy interests into private wealth.

That context matters because it reveals a pattern: mastery not of industry, but of access, regulation, and narrative. Today, Leviste grandstands as a reformer, speaking the language of ethics and accountability. Yet his principal successes — past and present — are deeply entwined with the state (and his mom).

And if more history were to speak, Leviste’s fits of outrage against corruption have been nothing short of selective. For example, while quick to brand the P3 million found on DPWH engineer Abelardo Calalo as a bribe a few months back, he fell silent when Calalo countered that the money was a “donation” allegedly demanded by Rep. Jojo Ang to support Leviste’s district projects.

He publicly named former Rep. Eric Buhain as a supposed kickback recipient, a claim Calalo flatly denied, then demanded from Calalo the names of contractors he could have independently verified from public records. Buhain is, of course, a political foe Leviste would best serve cold before their constituents.

However, Leviste declined conspicuously to address Calalo’s claims involving Ang and his own mother, Sen. Loren Legarda — perhaps, because he was drawing a line where scrutiny would cut too close.

This is not to dismiss his overall claims against corruption outright. It is only to insist on more scrutiny – even on himself. Transparency is not measured by emotion or exposure alone – as he is an expert in winning the views and clicks on social media — but by consistency, motive, and method.

Before we take every revelation from this young solon bait, hook, and sinker, we should ask whether this is reform or reputation management conducted in plain sight.

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SHORT BURSTS. For comments or reactions, email firingline@ymail.com or tweet @Side_View via X. Read current and past issues of this column at https://www.thephilbiznews.com

The survey, conducted from November 24 to 30, 2025, shows that while public awareness of national leaders remains nearly universal, trust in political leadership has softened since mid-2025—an erosion that coincides with mounting revelations of alleged irregularities in flood control projects and the widespread flooding that affected several regions across the country.

These developments triggered sustained public protests, led by the Catholic Church and reinforced by broad coalitions of civic, sectoral, and cause-oriented groups, all calling for accountability and systemic reform in public infrastructure governance.

Stratbase Group Founder and CEO Victor Andres Manhit said the survey results reflect a public that is both highly attentive and increasingly unforgiving of governance failures tied to corruption.

“The data points to a polarized but vigilant public,” Manhit said, noting that trust erosion was most pronounced in the National Capital Region and Mindanao—areas that bore the brunt of flooding and infrastructure-related concerns. Trust levels in Balance Luzon and the Visayas, while relatively steadier, also showed growing caution.

For President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the survey showed “much trust” at 38 percent in November 2025, while “little trust” climbed to 41 percent, underscoring the political cost of unresolved governance issues. Vice President Sara Duterteregistered higher national trust at 56 percent, with notable regional variation and consistently stronger ratings in Mindanao.

Stratbase noted, however, that the survey was conducted before the filing of plunder and other criminal cases involving the Vice President and several others, cases linked to the alleged misuse of confidential and intelligence funds during her tenure as a cabinet secretary. According to Manhit, this timing is significant, as it indicates public sentiment was already primed to demand accountability even before formal legal action was initiated.

Public anger began to crystallize following President Marcos’ July 28, 2025 State of the Nation Address, when he publicly rebuked erring officials with the remark “Mahiya naman kayo!” Manhit said the statement marked a political turning point that emboldened calls for investigation and elevated corruption in flood control projects from a technical issue to a broader moral and governance question.

“What we are seeing is not mere dissatisfaction but a firm and deliberate demand for accountability,” Manhit said. “Filipinos are increasingly linking corruption to governance failure—and to the real human and economic costs experienced during repeated flooding.”

The convergence of declining trust, high public awareness, and sustained protest activity, Stratbase said, points to a critical juncture for Philippine democratic institutions. How the administration and the justice system respond to corruption allegations—particularly in high-impact sectors such as flood control—will be central to restoring investor confidence, public safety, and trust in the state.

Manhit added that an intensifying propaganda war on social media is now shaping public perception, amplifying political narratives and further heightening public vigilance.

“The demand for accountability and justice is no longer abstract,” he said. “It is now directly tied to public safety, governance credibility, and the country’s long-term institutional strength.”

A few days after the unceremonious axing of Gen. Nicolas Torre III as PNP chief, Malacañang rushed in front of seething opinions by way of an assurance. Press Officer Claire Castro said there was no fault in Torre and that President Marcos was eyeing another “relevant post” for him.

It came across as somewhat of a call for Torre to chill and not make a fuss. Torre, the good soldier that he is, did not resist falling off the top. He stayed silent, stayed in uniform, and stayed unretired. That choice alone spoke louder than any press statement.

Let’s rewind and see the story of Torre’s rise before his fall, and one will remember that securing presidential favor came the hard way. He had to do the jobs that other top brasses in the PNP flinched from.

As Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) chief, it was Torre who led the high-profile arrest of Apollo Quiboloy. And then, the arrest and turnover to the ICC of former president Rodrigo Duterte. These operations required nerve, discipline, and a willingness to absorb political buckshots.

He met them all head-on and with grace and was rightfully rewarded by the President. When he assumed the top cop post, Torre moved fast, perhaps too fast, reshuffling senior ranks without clearance and stepping on Napolcom toes.

That misstep proved costly. He was sacked without explanation, amid whispers of rifts and rivalries. Then Lt. Gen. Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr. — the VVIP of those he relieved at the time — was a thoroughbred Ilocano and very much close to the Marcoses.

But for an administration under attack from all fronts — most aggressively from a Duterte bloc fronted by Vice President Sara Duterte and abetted by her accomplice, presidential sister Senator Imee Marcos — ditching Torre might have been a strategic blunder. The man who executed the most sensitive arrests was removed, while others with longer paper trails were spared.

Torre, for his part, showed no animosity. He publicly refused pity, reiterated loyalty to the President, and pointed attention instead to flood victims. Silence, service, and restraint — hardly the profile of a malcontent.

Four months after the Palace’s “we’re thinking of something” refrain, the thinking finally crystallized. Torre is now the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) general manager. The agency welcomed him with open arms, citing his law-enforcement experience as an asset to traffic management and public safety. Chairman Romando Artes vouched for him; Vice GM Procopio Lipana bowed out with thanks. It is a consequential post — Metro Manila is where governance is felt hourly, painfully, and publicly.

So congratulations, Gen. Torre. This is your proving ground — not just to an administration that dropped you like a hot potato, but to the public. Few voices, notably, defended you online when the PNP snub came; fewer still called out the affront to the PNPA, given you are its first graduate to reach the PNP’s top post. Others were elevated, shadows and gray areas trailing them — but this is not about them.

This appointment frees up the four-star rank and restores permanence to the sitting PNP chief. As for Torre, make the MMDA work. If 2028 is in your sights, this is where worth is earned in traffic, floods, order, and results.

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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

The death of former DPWH Undersecretary Cathy Cabral has reopened a familiar wound in Philippine public life, reviving memories of the late DILG Secretary and former Armed Forces chief Angelo Reyes — not because the circumstances of their deaths are identical, but because both occurred at moments when unresolved questions of power, accountability, and corruption loomed heavily over their public service.

Angelo Reyes’s death in 2011 came at the height of intense scrutiny over alleged irregularities in military funds. His passing transformed a corruption inquiry into a national reckoning, exposing not only the fragility of reputations built over decades but also the immense psychological burden placed on officials once controversy becomes relentless and public. For many Filipinos, it was a moment when governance ceased to be abstract and became painfully human.

Cabral’s death evokes similar reflections. As a senior official in the Department of Public Works and Highways — an agency long associated with vast budgets and politically sensitive infrastructure projects — she occupied a position where knowledge is power and discretion is currency. Her passing is particularly unsettling because it comes amid unresolved questions surrounding the controversial flood-control projects that have drawn public outrage and investigative attention.

With Cabral’s death, there is a growing perception that critical knowledge may have been buried with her — including who truly benefitted from questionable flood-control allocations and how decisions were made within the bureaucracy. In corruption cases, especially those involving layered approvals and diffuse responsibility, insiders often carry the connective truths that documents alone cannot fully reveal. When such individuals are suddenly gone, accountability becomes more difficult, and justice becomes even more elusive.

Recognizing this risk, the Office of the Ombudsman has reportedly directed authorities to secure and preserve Cabral’s mobile phone and electronic devices, signaling that even in death, potential evidence must be protected. Investigators may yet find digital trails — messages, call logs, files — that could shed light on networks of influence and decision-making processes that extend beyond a single official. In an era where governance increasingly leaves electronic footprints, devices can speak when people can no longer do so.

The parallel with Angelo Reyes lies not in assigning guilt, but in confronting a recurring national dilemma: how corruption investigations intersect with human limits. Both cases force uncomfortable questions about whether the Philippine political system and social media know how to pursue accountability without becoming crushingly punitive, and whether due process is adequately shielded from spectacle, rumor, and moral absolutism.

These deaths also expose a deeper institutional weakness. When systems rely too heavily on individuals holding sensitive knowledge — rather than transparent, well-documented processes — truth becomes fragile. The loss of one official should not threaten the unraveling of an entire investigation. Yet time and again, it does.

Ultimately, the deaths of Reyes and Cabral compel reflection not just on personal tragedy, but on systemic failure. They challenge the state to ask whether it has built institutions strong enough to outlast individuals, investigations resilient enough to survive loss, and a culture of accountability that does not exact a fatal human cost.

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Zaldy Co could have taken the legitimate route: testify before the Senate or the Independent Commission on Infrastructure (ICI) probing the multibillion-peso flood-control scam.

He could have done it in person or over Zoom. Those were the proper venues, not a conveniently timed social media video dropped days before a scheduled rally. I’m not alone in asking about the timing of his coming-out video, which was released a couple of days before the grand rally of a religious group.

Senator Leila de Lima, with good reason, has expressed concern. She points out that the Iglesia ni Cristo’s three-day “transparency rally” is suspiciously separate from the massive Trillion Peso March last month. If this were purely about accountability, why splinter the movement?

Again, she’s not alone in reading this bluntly that the military is watching whether this snowballs into a critical mass, where ordinary Filipinos would swell the crowds into the millions. They’re seeing if this snowballs and sustains momentum beyond Day 3.

Her assessment points to something deeper: a possible agenda to unseat the Marcos administration, which would conveniently place the Vice President at the helm. And because INC has long been aligned with the Dutertes, this “call for transparency” begins to look less like civic outrage and more like a carefully packaged attempt to reinstall the old power bloc.

Into this walks Co, whose revelations land like ammunition for that plan, if indeed there is one. But he is not only naïve but foolish if he thinks that toppling this administration is the path to his exoneration. If his newfound courage to expose the President is only a means to advance the interests of political forces already being rejected after six years of wanton killings, then Co is simply serving a faction no different from the one he accuses.

Let’s be clear: Vice President Sara Duterte is hardly the beacon of integrity here. She is mired in questions over seriously huge Department of Education (DepEd) funds. Add to that, her father’s foreign-policy posturing is disturbingly aligned with China’s agenda. That, to my mind, is treasonous.

What’s repulsive about Co’s revelations is that he frames himself as the victim, as the “used” man of Malacañang, when clearly every previous testimony painted him and former Speaker Martin Romualdez as alleged partners in plunder like the Mutt and Jeff that fed billions into the DPWH underworld.

And now comes this INC rally — a perfect stage for a political storm they hope will blow the President out of Malacañang. They’re selling it as some righteous crusade against corruption, yet, who do they want to replace him? That’s why many among us refuse to demand anyone’s resignation at this point, if only to install another likely opportunist.

So, I find myself in a quandary just as my fellow journalists from the ’80s now do. We once rose and swore never to allow another Marcos in power, and we are suddenly — as Randy David had pointed out — unwilling to demand this Marcos’s resignation. This is not because we want to protect him till 2028, but because the alternative is a return to something even darker.

I, like many other frustrated Filipinos, just cannot stand the hypocrisy. We demand reform in government, an end to systemic graft, and justice for every peso stolen from us, but what we get instead are spectacles pretending to be truth-telling. And until Co backs his words with real proof, including that which would incriminate himself and the most guilty, all he has offered is a monologue designed to serve selfish political ends.

That’s why my protest remains in this corner but strives to be a call that rings in the halls of power: a demand for real reform and real anti-corruption. Jail the guilty — yellow, pink, red, green, any color.

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SHORT BURSTS. For comments or reactions, email firingline@ymail.com or tweet @Side_View via X. Read current and past issues of this column at https://www.thephilbiznews.com

The new Ombudsman, former Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin “Boying” Remulla, could well be on his first bold strike as the new sheriff in town. Last October 22, Remulla ordered a sweeping purge within his new office, directing 80 senior officials to submit courtesy resignations and asking 204 newly hired employees to reapply for their posts.

The order targets those suspected to be “midnight appointees,” mostly from the final days of the previous administration. For now, they are to keep working while under review. It sounds bold. It even looks brave.

Duterte supporters, however, doubt whether he is after real reform or just a gritty performance for the cameras. They ask: What’s really under review here? Well, they claim, essentially, it’s not the persons holding the posts under investigation per se, but the grip and influence of the old Duterte administration on the office.

To be fair to Remulla, this shake-up of the office is direly needed, if only to erase the perception that the Ombudsman has been too lenient with crooks in government under former President Rodrigo Duterte. Note that under Ombudsman Samuel Martires — Duterte’s appointee — silence became the currency of survival.

This was the ombudsman who perfected the art of doing nothing. If I may borrow words from the Editorial of an online publication (ThePhilBizNews). Martires might seem like the epitome of cloaking submission as discretion and complicity as confidentiality. What he called prudence was Duterte’s Omerta — a pact of silence that buried accountability and betrayed the people the office was sworn to protect.

Now enter the twist: the Joel Villanueva case. In 2016, then-Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales dismissed Villanueva for misuse of ₱10 million in pork barrel funds – a ghost farm product-purchasing project in Region 11.

The Senate, invoking separation of powers, banded together and refused to enforce the ruling through a legal opinion pushed by Sen. Tito Sotto.

Then, as Remulla came in, he vowed to revive the order dismissing Villanueva as the penalty Morales had found fit for his administrative folly. But Remulla backpedaled, announcing he would no longer write to the now SenatePresident Sotto.

Why? Because he discovered that there was nothing to revive. Yes! Martires did two acts on Villanueva’s case that exemplified the accusations against him as Ombudsman – a shield for the powerful and a silencer of whistleblowers.

First, Martires dismissed in 2019 the criminal component of the charges against Villanueva, contrary to findings in the administrative investigation. And second, since his act did not dissolve the penalty in the administrative case already ruled on by Morales, he quietly reversed the dismissal order himself. That act is what now keeps Villanueva, and perhaps many others, free of consequence.

Now, Remulla shocks us with another revelation: that he’s battled leukemia. After surviving open-heart surgery, he faced blood cancer, and now finds his newfound health a reason for him to remain in office. For that, this corner offers no cynicism — only respect and a wish that his full recovery prevails.

Still, if he truly means to restore integrity, may he not wield justice like a sword meant only for the Marcoses’ enemies. The test of courage isn’t in cleansing the house of rivals; it’s in cleaning up your own house.

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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