Former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. promised that martial law would lead to a New Society. It became an epic failure.
The 1986 People Power Revolution promised to remove graft and corruption from the government. It resulted in another epic failure.
The 2001 People Power uprising that removed then-President Erap Estrada from Malacañang was another attempt to clean up government. That promise went pfft, too.
“Promises are made to be broken,” as the saying goes.
Now there’s Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial. The promise: to make her face the consequences for using obviously fake names—such as Mary Grace Piattos—as recipients of confidential funds? Hmm.
I’ve never watched any session of the impeachment trial. Ho-hum. If not for Facebook, I’d be absolutely clueless about that alias that combined the resto name and the brand of my former high-carb favorites.
To help the trial morph from ho-hum to yay, Pinoy senators should start working out, just in case Pinas’s weather is making their brains go bonkers. All those endorphins from the workouts will hopefully result in intelligent queries, debates, and discussions at the impeachment trial.
At least there was that one and only interesting session when VP Sara’s younger brother, Davao City Mayor Baste Duterte, appeared as a witness. His mere presence reportedly made the Duterte family’s enemies quiver in fear—that’s what the Duterte fans observed, though. But I’m sure non-fans would dismiss the hullabaloo as mere ado about nothing.
I wrote about this in a previous column months ago: if VP Sara is ever found guilty by the Senate and thereby banned from running for public office forevermore, her two younger brothers are still there to run for president in 2028. And for now, it’s Mayor Baste who is seemingly being groomed for that role. In case you haven’t noticed, he looks fit and astig, and his PR team can always highlight that as one of his assets. Does he work out daily? Hmm.
Fit and astig are the exact opposites of frail and weak. And who is being described these days as frail and weak? Ah, no, not President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.—PBBM—who is quietly confident. Ahem.
In PBBM’s latest State of the Nation Address in July 2026, he mentioned Pax Silica.
I’m familiar only with Pax Romana—Roman Peace—which is a Catholic student organization at the University of Santo Tomas where I graduated from college.
PBBM is betting on a completely different kind of peace: Pax Silica—Silicon Peace. Silicon is a chemical element. And it’s a peace not kept by prayers, but by microchips, supply chains, and artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence requires lots of water to help it cool down. The more the world relies on it, the more precious water resources are diverted away from the world’s residents. As if climate change is not enough to dry up our water supply.
Once water is gone, how will ChatGPT fans survive? Oh. They will have to learn how to write. And develop other talents that ChatGPT has been providing for them.
