When Stupidity Becomes Virtue

By Joey Salgado

Senator-judge Raffy Tulfo called a witness, Gina Acosta, the Office of the Vice President's special disbursing officer, stupid, "in the name of blind loyalty," for handing over millions in confidential funds to the security chief of Vice President Sara Duterte on Duterte’s orders, and for taking the security chief’s word that all was good with the stack of receipts on faith.

Another senator-judge, Ping Lacson, used the same word for the cut-and-paste contents of the OVP's confidential and intelligence fund (CIF) plans. The "plan" was drawn up, it turns out, only after the amount had already been decided by the Vice President apparently out of thin air. The prosecution's spokesperson put it starkly: “pera muna, bago plano.” Money first, plan later.

Earlier, Lacson used “bopol,” slang for stupid, to refer to a senator-judge he did not name. He was just being fair and precise in calling out a colleague’s breathtaking displays of stupidity.

What the recent impeachment hearing reveals is that stupidity, in this context, is a conscious act. Arrogance can do that. Being arrogant and stupid enough to think you won't get caught.

Arrogance, incompetence, or impunity, take your pick: either way it unmasks a sense of entitlement to taxpayers' money, molded by decades of treating a city like a kingdom, and the public purse like a private ATM for whatever strikes one's fancy. Let’s see. Thus far, the prosecution has presented evidence of payouts (medicines not cash) to informants with dodgy aliases, million-peso safehouses, Christmas parties, tree-planting activities. Receipts for liquidation? Liquidation can mean another thing in Dutertespeak. The confidential fund spending was so confidential that the disbursing officer herself didn't know how it was spent, only the Vice President and her security chief apparently did.

Deposed Senate president Alan Peter Cayetano, a shameless Duterte enabler, cautioned the prosecution against language that could undermine the impartiality of the impeachment court, the offense in question being private prosecutor Mae Divinagracia's use of the word "scam" to describe the confidential fund affair, and "mastermind" to describe the Vice President. The court struck both words from the record.

For his part, Senator-judge Francis Escudero, the presiding officer, reminded senator-judges that political neutrality cuts both ways. The sub judice rule the impeachment court has adopted applies not only to the senator-judges and the lawyers on both sides, but to the accused herself, the Vice President. Escudero made this clear in a ruling he read in full, one he ordered conveyed to Duterte through her lawyers.

Escudero also warned everyone, senator-judges included, against "trial by publicity.” Arguing the case in media rather than the chamber would "threaten the court's integrity, degrade its dignity, and weaponize the media to substitute public outrage for actual evidence.” And senator-judges, he added, are bound by their oath to "do impartial justice.” They are free to question witnesses for clarification, but not to turn those questions into partisan theater. Everyone: pakibaba ang kilay.

Ironically, that same hearing day, one such violation was ignored: Senator-judge Robin Padilla invoking the selfless sacrifice of Filipino heroes who, he’ll have you know, used aliases as a way of justifying the unjustifiable. He was clearly lawyering for the accused, but not de campanilla, as old lawyers would say. Just a hollow bell, ringing annoyingly.

Perhaps the presiding officer should also include a rule against displays of stupidity, though it will predictably be ignored, since stupid people wearing robes tend to think they're geniuses.

But unlike most netizens, Padilla’s interjections don't make me laugh. They're an invitation to anger, despair, or serious reflection on the decline of erudition in that chamber. That bar has been set that low.

And yet his remarks draw approving nods from those who revel in the open display of smart-shaming, where “bopol” has become a signifier of authenticity. Macho posturing, crude and divisive rhetoric, bloodlust, and now the celebration of the vacuous. Is stupid the new Dutertismo?

This article also appears in Rappler