Can’t Duterte just ignore Trillanes?
PRESIDENT Duterte gains nothing, loses much, by continuing to think and talk of Sen. Antonio Trillanes. By engaging the minority senator, he has only succeeded in unduly magnifying his image as an opposition figure.
Presidential time spent on Trillanes could, or should, have been devoted instead to easing the economic woes of the people, including rising prices, stagnant wages, criminality, traffic madness and government corruption, not to mention natural calamities.
Crowding around the boob tube Tuesday awaiting what Malacañang trumpeters had built up as the “President’s Address,” people were treated to a two-hour Q&A with Duterte being led by his lawyer. He mentioned Trillanes some 20 times. (He should be billed for the advertising.)
Trillanes has not done anything tangible for us plain folk, but having become a presidential obsession, he may just eclipse opposition leaders who are more qualified to challenge an obviously dazed Duterte.
Questions have popped up: (1) Is Duterte putting up Trillanes as a straw man, a pushover foe; (2) Is a foreign operator misleading Duterte into making a fatal miscalculation by targeting Trillanes; (3) Is this alien element the source of Duterte’s story of a three-party destabilization plot against him this October?
The cases against Trillanes are already with the courts where the President’s lawyers are waiting in ambush. Duterte should just keep quiet and position himself as far away as possible from the skirmish.
If Solicitor General Jose Calida loses the cases before the Supreme Court and the lower courts where he appears to have gone forum-shopping, the President can fire him – after a decent gap – for other reasons.
The only problem is if Calida had the foresight to also “research” on Duterte and his family while he (the SolGen) was using government personnel and resources digging dirt on Trillanes and former Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.
It is quite obvious even to the casual observer that the President is mentally and physically tired and in bad need of a long recuperative vacation.
After two years of hacking the job, it has become clear – even to him, I suppose – that the shoes of the president are a bit too big for the Davao mayor. He can let a tight, competent team – if he can assemble one – to run things while he rests.
Trillanes is just a minor problem. The stiff soldier playing senator can be safely ignored – unless Duterte has secret big reasons to be deathly scared of him. That, we kibitzers don’t know.