CHICKENPIE.The Dutertes finally have matching schedules.
Rodrigo, in a courtroom at The Hague. Sara, in a courtroom in Manila. The family has never been more coordinated.
The Senate opened Sara’s impeachment trial on May 18. The actual hearing doesn’t start until July 6 — because this is the Philippines, and we need a few weeks of pre-trial press releases before the theater begins. The charges: ₱612 million in misused confidential CHED funds, unexplained wealth, and death threats against the Marcos family. Sara says it’s politically motivated. In the Philippines, everything is politically motivated. The question is whether it’s also true.
Here is what nobody will mention in their Senate testimony: the same family that spent years explaining why the rules didn’t apply — to suspects, to evidence, to international arrest warrants — is now in courts arguing that the rules should apply to them. Sara’s lawyers will cite due process. Rodrigo’s lawyers are citing it in The Hague. It’s a very useful concept when you’re the one facing the charges.
The man presiding is Alan Peter Cayetano — former Rodrigo ally, current Senate president, installed by the same political machinery that Sara’s camp once controlled. The daughter is being tried before a court led by her father’s old partner. Walang sinabi. Nobody had to write this one. The Philippines just keeps producing it, season after season, same cast, different courtrooms.
What makes the confidential fund charge land is the word itself. Confidential. The Philippines has spent years arguing about confidential line items in the budget. Where they go. Who authorizes them. Why there are never any receipts. Sara’s ₱612 million lands in the middle of that unresolved national argument — not as a resolution, but as another instance of the same question: who watches the people who decide what we cannot see?
The father taught the country that accountability is optional. The daughter is learning what it looks like when it isn’t.
The Senate convened. The summons was issued. There are lawyers, scheduled proceedings, and an actual calendar date. July 6. This is the same institution Rodrigo spent six years dismissing as irrelevant. It’s less irrelevant now.
Two trials. One surname. If convicted, Sara loses the office and the 2028 presidential run in one stroke. That is the design. Whether the design survives contact with Filipino political reality is the actual question — one the country has been asking for forty years without a conclusive answer.
The family is patient. So are we. We’ve been practicing since 1986.
