FIRING LINE: Between a rock and a hard place

By Robert B. Roque, Jr.

Senator Imee Marcos says the Duterte-ICC episode sets a dangerous precedent. She’s not wrong — just not how she wants the public to believe. The sovereignty angle may be the banner she waves, but it’s clearly just the argument she rides on. The real ride though is toward something more self-serving: political preservation.

From the start, these hearings were hardly in aid of legislation as they were in aid of election.

The first hearing in March saw Marcos zero in on Gen. Nicolas D. Torre of the CIDG — the officer who led the arrest of former president Rodrigo Duterte. She repeatedly tried to corner him, aiming to pin blame and stir outrage. She lost steam in the second hearing, where the absence of key resource persons left her with no one to confront. But by the third hearing last Friday, she picked up where she left off — going after Gen. Torre again and then moving to easier targets like Winston Lacanilao.

Imee’s aggressive line of questioning, especially toward Lacanilao — a civilian and easy target already scorched on social media for his role in Duterte’s transfer — wasn’t about clarifying the facts. It was emotional baiting, pure and simple.

A calculated performance meant to win back affection from the pro-Duterte crowd — whose approval she needs, and whose loyalty she’s never quite secured.

But the public isn’t blind to the real workings behind Imee Marcos’s theatrics. Even Duterte’s longtime partner, Honeylet Avanceña, couldn’t keep a straight face about the drama in the Senate.

She pushed back against Imee’s moves, pointing out how the senator rushed to flaunt her signed arrest and detention order for Lacanilao before the media. This did appear to betray the motive. People may not speak out often, but they know how to read sincerity — or the lack of it — when they see it.

Senate President Chiz Escudero, for his part, had to step in, overturning Lacanilao’s hours-long unauthorized detention out of both due process and sheer human decency — the man was mourning his grandfather.

He issued instead a show-cause order, a proper legal move, reminding everyone that the Senate is not a coliseum for personal vendettas. He exposed that this form of questioning had veered far from oversight.

When senators flout Senate rules and bend proceedings to serve their own political storylines, it’s not sovereignty that suffers first — it’s the Senate’s integrity. Imee should realize that now before she loses all the votes she has in her stock.

Because standing beside her in these theatrics is not just any ally, but Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa — Duterte’s former PNP chief and the chief enforcer of his brutal drug war. Dela Rosa is no impartial voice; he, too, is named in the same ICC case and, like Imee, is fighting for his political life with his Senate term ending unless reelected next May.

So as Imee tries to claw back favor from the Duterte base, she finds herself relying on a man who is equally desperate to save himself. That’s not just political theater — that’s Imee Marcos caught between a “Bato” and a hard place.

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