They can't buy her

WHATEVER is happening to Vice President Sara Duterte today traces back to one consequential choice: joining President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in 2022 as half of UniTeam. This is her cross to bear, and the price of believing an electoral alliance could become a governing partnership. In 2022, UniTeam looked unstoppable. Marcos and Duterte combined two enormous constituencies and promised unity, stability and continuity. But politics eventually reveals what campaign slogans conceal. By 2023, the first serious fault line appeared around Duterte's confidential funds. What began as budget scrutiny became a broader political confrontation. Yet one detail is often lost: It was the Marcos administration that gave her those funds, after bringing her into the national security architecture, including as vice chairman of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac). Was Marcos simply giving his vice president resources for a responsibility his administration entrusted to her? Or was the fund destined to become political leverage once the alliance fractured? Support, or trap? We may never know. But government cannot erase its role in creating the arrangement it later subjected to extraordinary scrutiny led by then-House speaker Martin Romualdez. By November 2023, Duterte abandoned requests for P650 million in confidential funds for the Office of the Vice President and Department of Education after sustained congressional opposition and public criticism. Supporters saw persecution; critics saw accountability. Whatever label one chooses, 2023 began a relentless sequence: investigations, congressional inquiries, budget pressure, political attacks, UniTeam's collapse, impeachment and now criminal prosecution. The contrast in governance also became visible. Duterte's image rested on decisiveness and discipline. Marcos, by contrast, has been criticized for drift, weak implementation, corruption scandals and lack of direction. After Duterte left the Cabinet in June 2024, she became more direct, attacking the administration's handling of inflation, food security and governance. That was when UniTeam revealed its real architecture. She had not simply been Marcos' running mate. She had been its conscience. She brought the Duterte mandate, Mindanao, political discipline and a connection to voters who wanted government to be forceful, practical and attentive to ordinary Filipinos. Without her, Marcos must answer alone for the economy, corruption controversies, infrastructure scandals, insider politics and the question every administration faces: Are our lives better? Take Duterte out of UniTeam and there is no longer a partner to share the burden. There is only Marcos and the Marcos record. Then came the most painful blow. On March 11, 2025, former president Rodrigo Duterte was arrested and eventually transferred to the custody of the International Criminal Court (ICC) custody in The Hague. Whatever one's politics, imagine that as a daughter. Politicians prepare for criticism, investigations and elections. No daughter truly prepares to see her father taken thousands of kilometers from home. Then came impeachment. The 2025 case was eventually struck down by the Supreme Court, but the political battle returned in 2026. On Feb. 18, 2026, Duterte announced she would run for president in 2028. That declaration changed the equation. The Duterte base no longer had to speculate about succession. It had a candidate. Once Sara declared, the Duterte base shifted from a defensive constituency into an electoral one. Impeachment proceedings could now be viewed not only as accountability over past acts, but as a political contest involving the declared challenger for 2028. Then came Friday. On Sept. 4, a Quezon City court issued a warrant against Duterte on three counts of grave threats involving the president, first lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and Romualdez. Duterte posted bail the following day. Legally, the warrant compels her to face trial. Politically, it may have done something else: shoved Sara fully into campaign mode. Impeachment had kept her fighting defensively, answering charges, challenging procedures, surviving institutions. A warrant changes politics' visual language. Now a sitting vice president faces criminal prosecution, impeachment and a presidential race. But a warrant is not a conviction, and a criminal case cannot by itself remove a vice president. That requires impeachment and conviction by the constitutionally prescribed Senate vote. The court determines criminal liability. The Senate decides impeachable liability. Probable cause cannot become a substitute for conviction. Then came the most politically consequential image: not a courtroom, not an impeachment hearing, but Duterte among ordinary Filipinos, embracing an elderly woman overcome with emotion. Politics is often decided through images long after legal arguments are forgotten. Marcos may therefore have given Duterte something no consultant could manufacture: a photograph of 2028. Government machinery on one side. An embattled vice president on the other. And in her arms, an old woman crying. That image collapses years of warfare into something voters instinctively understand. Her supporters do not see merely an accused official. They see a daughter whose father was taken to The Hague; a vice president subjected to investigation after investigation; an impeachment respondent; a criminal accused; and now a presidential candidate moving among ordinary Filipinos. Persecution, whether real, exaggerated or merely perceived, can unite a constituency more effectively than advertising. The target becomes the story. The accused becomes the symbol. The defensive battle becomes a movement. Duterte is now, unmistakably, the opposition: the administration's most prominent adversary, its declared challenger for 2028 and the figure around whom resistance to Marcos increasingly organizes. This is still Duterte's cross to bear. She chose UniTeam, helped choose Marcos and trusted the partnership. But Marcos must bear something too. Without Duterte, he owns the administration completely: its economy, corruption controversies, failures of execution, drift and distance from ordinary Filipinos. Every succeeding action against Sara risks strengthening the force it seeks to contain. Impeachment did not make her disappear. Her father's transfer to The Hague did not make the Duterte base disappear. Her presidential declaration mobilized that base. The warrant may have given it a cause, and an image. So, carry your cross, Inday. Learn from 2022. Endure what follows. But remember what this period has taught you: Power is not friendship; coalition is not loyalty; and unity without shared purpose eventually collapses into struggle. Marcos should understand the lesson too. UniTeam won in 2022, but it could not survive its contradictions. By 2028, Filipinos may no longer be judging the alliance that won an election. They may be judging the government that destroyed its partner and, in trying to contain her, created its strongest opponent. That is the real price of UniTeam.