Bob Tacto's columns

 Not Knowing Is Not a Defense On the thirty-first day of a trial that was supposed to be about the Vice President, the Senate found itself examining her brother. Davao City Mayor Sebastian "Baste" Duterte took the stand under subpoena. By day's end, Presiding Officer Francis "Chiz" Escudero had declared him a hostile witness, ruling that the mayor holds an interest adverse to the prosecution's case. If the allegations of procurement irregularities are proven, Escudero reasoned, the mayor could face direct liability alongside his sister. A witness compelled to testify in an impeachment trial was found to have a personal stake in its outcome. That is not a procedural footnote. It shows how tightly the Duterte family's public offices and private interests appear to have been woven together, and how little our institutions did to keep them apart. What is established, and what is not Precision matters here, so let me be plain about the limits of w...

MANILA — The date September 4, 2026, will be recorded in Philippine history as a day of profound legal and political reckoning. When the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 98 issued an arrest warrant for Vice President Sara Duterte for grave threats, it tore through the veil of invincibility that has long shielded the nation’s most powerful political dynasty. Yet, to view this moment merely as a legal victory for the Marcos administration would be to misread the battlefield entirely. The warrant against the Vice President—arising from her televised admission that she had ordered a hitman to assassinate President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the First Lady, and former Speaker Martin Romualdez—presents a paradoxical reality. It is simultaneously a landmark achievement for the rule of law and a stark revelation of how dangerously fractured the institutions of the Philippine state have become. We are not witnessing a uniform application of justice. We are witnessing a bifurcated ...