FIRING LINE: The sick man from Leyte

By Robert B. Roque, Jr.

Last weekend, I thought I saw FAMAS-quality acting in VP Sara Duterte posting bail at a Quezon City court, and wrote about it. But the Monday after that, we all saw presidential cousin and former Speaker Martin Romualdez being arrested at the hospital. And that was really bad acting — nothing about that scene suggested he was sick at all.

Everything was off. Start with the vitals monitor beside his bed, the one his own camp put on display: heart rate 98, blood pressure 148/90, oxygen at 99 percent. That’s not a man circling the drain but more like one with a seemingly guilty conscience. Most doctors call 148/90 “mildly elevated.” But netizens strongly sense something else: fear of accountability.

Some joked his vitals looked better than any of the motorists stuck for seven hours along NLEx traffic in flooded San Simon — which, given the ₱7.44 billion in alleged flood-control kickbacks he’s now answering for, is a karmic punchline.

Then there was the mugshot. Police couldn’t get him into the standard orange detainee shirt because of the IV line, so they draped it over his chest like a picnic blanket while he lay flat, breathing tube in his nose, and holding up his arrest card.

I read a hilarious comment calling it a tombstone shot as he lay there motionless with the charge written across a whiteboard slate: Plunder.

The truth is, he looked so far from pale and weak that the people’s search for his supposed illness was trending.

Officially, the diagnosis that went around the media was another anomaly in itself. To portray his dire condition, there were three: “cardiovascular event,” “unstable blood pressure,” and an “anxiety attack.”

Bulakenyos who spent the Habagat weeks wading through lost flood-control money suggested a cure for Cong. Martin: two tablespoons of Bulacan floodwater that ought to sort out the anxiety.

This is such a worn-out script we’ve seen with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo back in the day and, more recently, the host of politicians dragged into the flood control scam. Wheelchair, hospital bed, oxygen tube, sudden illness the moment arrest warrants are out to be served. Gasgas na yung script na ‘yan!

Props to Inday Sara for not playing the sick suspect character during her day in court. Her drama at the courthouse steps — though cringy — was a performance well worth it for comedy.

In contrast, Martin had his performance at Cardinal Santos worth 10 rotten tomatoes.

It’s a real shame to be bad at acting when it’s your own freedom at stake in the role you’re playing. In the end, at least, both of them are getting the apparent reckoning they deserve.


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