IT has been said.

“Less talk, less mistake.”

One of the trademark brands of former president Rodrigo Duterte is the ease by which he opens his mouth. This is the Duterte that endeared himself to his followers. His brutal frankness was considered a breath of fresh air by the diehard Duterte supporters. It is a trait that became the marker of his political DNA, which, understandably, he passed on to his children.

But in a political landscape where the Duterte dynasty is facing challenges, where daughter Vice President Sara Duterte, perceived as the frontrunner in the 2028 presidential elections, is like ripe fruit ready for picking, or rather, for stoning, the inability to control one’s mouth may prove to be the Duterte dynasty’s undoing.

This all began in the way Vice President Duterte responded to criticisms and queries regarding her use of confidential funds in 2022 and her requested confidential funds for 2024. Instead of answering truthfully, she lashed out at Sen. Risa Hontiveros, practically calling her a dramatic star, and at party-list representative France Castro, red-tagging her and citing her previous arrest record. Not contented with sliming her congressional critics, she even expanded the object of her squid tactics by openly attacking anyone and everyone who questioned her confidential funds as enemies of peace and, therefore, enemies of the people.

Obviously, the strategy backfired. It did not silence her critics. In fact, it even widened their base, that even ordinary citizens who merely wanted her to be accountable to those whose hard-earned taxes her confidential funds would be sourced from ended up being offended.

Sara Duterte would have known that she was no longer the sacrosanct political figure she used to be. The Philippines is a totally different political playing field compared to Davao City, which her family rules with an iron grip and where dissent and demands for accountability can very easily be tamped down and silenced. Beyond the behavior of the electorate, she also forgot that there are already other political players in the national political scene who see her as a possible competitor in 2028. She obviously miscalculated.

And thus, she changed tactics. She became quiet; instead of firing up the political toxicity in the air, she spent time savoring the cleaner air of the mountains. She shopped for plants and hobnobbed with the political elite class. But whatever silence her handlers wanted her to evince, as part of some crisis management script, was soundly undermined when her father, former president Duterte, began opening his mouth. It is not certain if this was part of the game plan to allow him to fight on her behalf. What is certain is that this has not helped.

The former president trained his ire on his former allies in Congress, particularly the House of Representatives, openly criticizing them for having miscellaneous and extraordinary funds, which actually continued during his term. He demanded that every member of Congress be audited. He openly castigated them for shaming and disrespecting his daughter when the House decided to cancel the confidential fund allocation earmarked for the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd), which had already been approved by the respective committees. While it may be true that the actions of Congress may have been influenced by the fact that its speaker, Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, is considered a potential rival of the vice president for the presidency, picking a fight with Congress this early was a wrong move.

The move of the former president that was most fatal was when he openly threatened Castro. He forgot that his days as president, where he could publicly threaten to kill anyone without facing the legal consequences, are over. Castro ended up filing criminal cases against him, with open support from the House leadership.

As if this was not bad enough, Rep. Paolo Duterte jumped into the fray and excoriated Castro for being onion-skinned, reminding her that as a member of the House, she should be professional in accepting criticism the way his father dealt with criticism. This statement from the younger Duterte was a gross miscalculation, judging by the level of clapback it got from social media commentators. He was quickly reminded of how critics of the ex-president suffered, from ABS-CBN losing its franchise to Rappler being sued in court and former senator Leila de Lima being jailed. In fact, several netizens were arrested in 2020 for issuing online threats against the president.

There are also external forces that appear to be unintentionally working against the Dutertes. The hostility displayed by the Chinese coast guard against Philippine ships near Ayungin Shoal, which fortunately we all witnessed courtesy of media people who were present to document the harassment, has brought back into focus the pro-China stance of the former president and even of the vice president who at the time this piece was being written had not released any statement condemning the actions of China. It is also an unfavorable coincidence that the confidential funds originally allotted by the House to the agencies led by the vice president have been redirected to the Philippine Coast Guard to ramp up its intelligence operations in the West Philippine Sea. Using this diversion as the lynchpin of protestations by her father, in the face of the fact that it is to the benefit of warding off threats to our sovereign rights over our EEZ, will not be politically favorable to the Dutertes at a time of heightened tensions with China, more so that they are perceived by many as being pro-China.

There are already signs that the vice president is now being hurt politically. A recent survey by Tangere from October 10-13 with 2,000 mobile users nationwide revealed that Sen. Raffy Tulfo is now the frontrunner, with 32.95 percent compared to VP Duterte’s 30.10 percent. While the margin is small, and we can raise problems in connection with mobile surveys, this is still an early sign of trouble for the Duterte political dynasty.