Blog

I will not write about the ongoing impeachment proceeding definitely not as a lawyer nor political scientist. I will write about it as a community doctor, a defender of women’s and environmental human rights, and as someone who calls this region home.

The language I know best is the language of human life, dignity and care.

Lately, when we open the news or scroll through social media, we are told a very specific story about the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte. We are told it is a heavyweight boxing match: Marcos versus Duterte. We are told it is just Manila politics trying to crush Davao. And because of that narrative, I know many of our fellow Davaoeños are angry. They feel our region is being targeted.

But as a doctor, I know the danger of misdiagnosing a patient. If you treat a deep, systemic infection as if it’s just a superficial scratch, the patient dies.

The Real Diagnosis: It’s Not a Feud, It’s a Systemic Infection of opacity.

This impeachment is not a personal or political feud between two powerful families. That is a distraction. The real issue is a severe hemorrhage of public trust.

According to the Commission on Audit—an independent body, not a political party—hundreds of millions of pesos in confidential funds cannot be properly accounted for. We are talking about public money linked to missing records, unverified receipts and names that do not exist.

As a health professional, I don’t look at those numbers and see abstract balance sheets. I see opportunity costs.

I see the rural health units that lack basic medicines.

I see the public hospital beds that aren’t there for a mother in labor.

I see the severely underfunded mental health programs and the lack of safe shelters for abused women and children.

Every single peso that vanishes into a black box of “confidentiality” is a peso directly extracted from the survival and well-being of our communities. That is not a political theory; that is a socio-economic reality. Distributive justice means that public resources must serve the public, especially the most vulnerable.

The consistency of the progressive movement

To those who say this is a selective “demolition job” by the current administration, let me be absolutely clear as a human rights defender.

The progressive social movement does not take marching orders from Malacañang. We have spent decades—and we continue today—demanding accountability from the Marcoses. We have fought, and will continue to fight, for the victims of the dictatorship, for the recovery of ill-gotten wealth, and against policies that harm our environment and our people. We do not give the Marcos administration a free pass.

But justice cannot be a game of whataboutism. A wrong committed by one side does not grant an immunity passport to the other. If we excuse financial opacity today just because we dislike the President, we destroy the very tools we need to hold both of them accountable.

We refuse to let the genuine, decades-long struggle for good governance be reduced to collateral damage in a war between dynasties. This is not Marcos vs. Duterte. This is the People versus Impunity.

True loyalty demands excellence

To my fellow Davaoeños, I say this with the utmost respect for our shared pride: popularity is a mandate to serve with absolute excellence. It is not a license to operate in the dark.

In the women’s movement, we have learned a painful truth over the decades: secrecy is the breeding ground for abuse. Where there is no transparency, the vulnerable suffer. Governance is no different. Expecting our leaders to show their receipts is not a sign of betrayal; it is a sign of political maturity. If we pride ourselves on discipline and leadership in Davao, then we should be the very first ones demanding the highest standards of transparency from our own.

We cannot build a healthy society on the principle that some people are too popular to be questioned. If we tolerate opacity now, we poison the political landscape for the next generation. Intergenerational justice demands that we leave behind a system where the law applies equally to the highest official and the ordinary citizen.

Conclusion

Let us change the conversation nowadays. Let us step away from the political theater and anchor ourselves in what matters: the health of our democracy, the safety of our environment, and the dignity of our women and children.

Impeachment is a painful constitutional process, but it is a necessary medical intervention to protect the body politic. It is not about party politics. It is about accountability. And accountability is the only shield the people have against the abuse of power.

We in Davao know what it means to nurture leadership from the ground up. But the national stage has become a toxic soil where transparency goes to die. If the only way to reach the highest seat in the land is to surrender the very principles of accountability we pride ourselves on, then we love her enough to say: “Come home. We will not let the system destroy what we built.”(davaotoday.com)