You won’t believe these politics

Sometimes life imitates art. Other times it imitates the plot of B-tier telenovelas. 

Like in current Philippine politics, which is only missing a long-lost twin, a dramatic amnesia reveal, and a slap-filled showdown to get a three-season deal on Telemundo.

So get your popcorn but also don’t, because this one has massive real-world stakes.

Like any good soap opera, it all starts with a rivalry between two dynasties:

• The first is current President Bongbong Marcos Jr, son of longtime autocrat Ferdinand who fled aboard a US military jet amid mass peaceful protests in 1986.

• The second is former leader Rodrigo Duterte, who had a meteoric rise from local mayor to populist president in 2016, pledging a tough-on-crime approach.

The two families were allies for a while, with Duterte’s daughter Sara even joining the Marcos Jr. ticket as veep, sweeping to power in 2022 on political savvy and star power.

But the honeymoon didn’t last. Why?

Yes, there were egos: Sara wanted defence, but Bongbong palmed her off to education.

Yes, there were scandals too, like the $10M Sara’s office allegedly blew with almost zero receipts, leading to her chief of staff’s brief jailtime for contempt in 2024.

And yes, dear Intriguer, there were even hitmen: outraged by the above jailing, Sara herself promptly hopped on a Facebook live to announce she’d hired a sicario to assassinate her own boss and running-mate (Marcos Jr) if she ever turned up dead!

And it was really that whole ✌️threaten to kill you✌️ thing that unleashed the next twist:

The International Criminal Court (ICC) had always been investigating wild reports that Duterte Senior’s earlier war on drugs actually involved corrupt cops killing tens-of-thousands of random villagers and peripheral players to earn performance bonuses.

But the ICC couldn’t do much while President Marcos was protecting his predecessor. But sure enough, 108 days after Sara’s hitman announcement, her ex-president dad was in cuffs en route to The Hague, where he now faces charges of crimes against humanity.

Surely that’s the end? WRONG. 

We just saw two more twists: first, Marcos-friendly lawmakers are (again) trying to impeach Sara over that whole ✌️hire a hitman to kill the president✌️ thing. If the senate convicts, she’ll be banned from running for the top job in 2028 (she’s now polling first!)

So Sara needs friendly senators, but that’s the second twist: authorities just tried to execute another ICC warrant against a senator who was her dad’s former police chief, but failed after the senator barricaded himself inside the senate (with mysterious shots fired!).

Whew. So let’s leave it there, but side note for our Filipino readers, how y’all doing? Do you need a hug?