@re-joyce 13 July 2026

Six years ago, an ordinary citizen, a public school teacher at that, was legally pursued for making a TOTALLY unrealistic, 50-million-peso threat against then President Duterte--a threat he had ZERO practical capacity to fulfill. Fast forward today, and the public discourse is divided over whether a sitting Vice President-- another Duterte, a high-ranking official with actual access to power and resources to actually execute such rhetoric--should face consequences for explicitly threatening the lives of the President, First Lady, and the Speaker of the House. When the law heavily penalizes the powerless for empty words but hesitates to hold the powerful accountable for viable threats, it signals a troubling double standard in our legal and democratic frameworks. True rule of law requires accountability to be scaled proportional to one's power, not diminish or be shielded because of it.