CHICKENPIE.Chester squinted at the TV from his favorite perch — a rusty stool near the sari-sari store's corner. Today's headline made him cluck involuntarily.
House Committee on Justice. Sara Duterte impeachment hearing. April 14, 2026. Four complaints. One vice president. Maximum drama.
The TV showed senators filing in like it was opening night at a mall premiere. One held up a folder — not to read from, but to position for the camera. Chester had seen enough jeepney arguments to recognize a prop when he saw one.
In Quiapo, we settle disputes differently. You yell, you stomp, you possibly throw a shoe, then you buy each other fish sauce and call it even. But in the House Committee on Justice? You need a folder, a statement, and the willingness to be clip-worthy.
The gavel in the cartoon? It wasn't justice — it was a prop. In real congressional hearings, the gavel drops when someone wants the room to shut up, not when truth arrives. Chester would've settled this differently: whoever shows up with the most witnesses that day wins.
The folder was the weapon. The statement was the shield. The gavel was just the soundtrack.
April 14, 2026. Four impeachment complaints, one woman standing at the center of it, and a House Committee on Justice doing what it does best: performing certainty while the actual verdict hides somewhere in the schedule, scheduled for another Tuesday that nobody will remember.
Chester went back to eating. He had seen enough trials to know: the loudest ones rarely end the way they start.
