What’s happened to Rowena Guanzon?
Did you know she nearly made Leni Robredo our president today?
The first is a question of our moment—asked not out of idle curiosity, but out of quiet unease. The second question is poised not as fantasy, but as a reminder of a missed turning point, now buried beneath the guilt of lost opportunity.
There was a time when the name Guanzon evoked restraint, principle, and an unflinching respect for the rule of law. Today, it provokes debate, division, even disbelief. Somewhere between then and now, a once-familiar figure appears transformed—and in that transformation lies a story larger than any one person.
Not every symbol is self-made. Some are thrust into meaning by events beyond their control. Rowena Guanzon is such a figure. Her public journey—marked by acts of moral clarity and moments of combustible confrontation—now mirrors the country’s uneasy slide into a politics where anger masquerades as courage, spectacle eclipses substance, and divisions harden by the day.
In that sense, Guanzon has become our political Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—not as a caricature, but as caution: a portrait of what happens when a nation’s values are pulled violently, in opposite directions.
THEN: Guanzon the Jekyll—A Vote for a Future That Never Came
A single vote, even when overruled, can expose the path a nation chose not to take. Commissioner Rowena Ganzon’s dissent in the case against Ferdinand Marcos Jr. marked that unrealized future.
It was not merely a legal opinion. It was a declaration of values.
I remember this clearly because, just weeks before the 2022 presidential election, I wrote an ATABAY piece titled Comelec Commissioner Guanzon: The Referee Who Blew The Whistle. In that article, I drew attention to the plain but thunderous sentence at the heart of her 24-page decision—a crucial line that left little room for ambiguity:
“I vote to GRANT the Petitions for Disqualification and declare Respondent FERDINAND R. MARCOS II DISQUALIFIED from running for the position of the President of the Philippines.”
Guanzon made that dissenting call while fully aware of the terrain before her. She stood against the gravitational pull of a political machinery flush with resources, lawyers, and historical insulation. She made it not at the beginning of her career, when ambition still clouds judgment, but at its twilight—when reputation is fragile, retaliation is real, and the road beyond public office is uncertain.
That is what made her dissent so bracing. So unsettling. So admirable.
In that lonely sound of dissent, one hears not just a legal argument, but the echo of a future we almost chose.
While majority treated the issue of repeated failure to file income tax returns as a technical lapse, Guanzon refused to look away from its moral gravity. Taxes, she argued, are not paperwork—they are civic obligation made flesh. To evade them is to deprive the nation of classrooms, roads, and dignity. In her 24-page dissent, she called it what it was: moral turpitude, a breach serious enough to disqualify anyone seeking the presidency.
That vote mattered precisely because it lost.
Had it prevailed, the trajectory of Philippine politics might have bent—if not radically, then decisively—in another direction. Perhaps the systematic revision of the nation’s history would have met firmer resistance. Perhaps public trust in institutions would not feel so eroded. Perhaps accountability would not sound like an old word—odd, optional, negotiable.
There is also a harder, more concrete perhaps that is often conveniently set aside.
As former Chief Justice Artemio V. Panganiban has explained, had Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s certificate of candidacy (COC) been cancelled, he could not have been substituted. In law, cancellation means the COC is void from the very beginning—deemed never to have existed.
The votes cast for him would have been considered stray and therefore not counted. The presidency would have gone to the candidate who received the highest number of valid votes.
In that scenario, Leni Robredo would have been president of the Philippines.
This is not political fantasy. It is constitutional arithmetic—an outcome anchored not in emotion, but in law. And it sharpens the weight of Guanzon’s dissent all the more: her lost vote did not merely challenge a candidacy. It pointed to a radically different future—one that slipped past us, not by accident, but by choice.
It was, in every sense, a hope that never was.
NOW: Guanzon the Hyde—A Familiar Face of Dutertismo
Fast forward to the present, and the image could not be more jarring.
The viral mall altercation involving Guanzon was not merely a personal incident. It became a cultural Rorschach test—revealing how deeply Dutertismo has seeped into our political bloodstream.
Here was a former elections commissioner, once the voice of restraint and legality, now widely perceived as embodying the Duterte Diehard Supporter (DDS) ethos: combative, unapologetic, quick to strike back, convinced that outrage is synonymous with righteousness.
The reaction was predictably polarized. Supporters framed her as a senior citizen defending dignity against disrespect. Critics saw intemperance, entitlement, and the casual normalization of aggression. Social media, as always, chose sides—with little room for nuance.
But the real story was not Guanzon’s temper.
It was how familiar her outburst felt.
Dutertismo thrives on confrontation. It celebrates anger as authenticity. It treats civility as weakness and restraint as elitism. Sharp tongues are mistaken for courage; volume replaces argument. The mall scene—petty on the surface—was a distilled version of our national discourse.
A cough became a provocation. A remark became an insult. An encounter became a viral battlefield.
In that moment, Guanzon ceased to be merely herself. She became a microcosm—a living exhibit of how a political style, once confined to podiums and press conferences, has migrated into everyday life.
The Parable of the Mall—and the Nation
This is where the Jekyll-and-Hyde metaphor finds its full meaning.
The transformation is not about hypocrisy. It is about contagion.
What began as a populist performance of toughness has evolved into a cultural habit. Defensiveness replaces dialogue. Identity eclipses reason. Every disagreement becomes a proxy war between political camps. Pro-Guanzon versus anti-Guanzon mirrors pro-Duterte versus Anti-Duterte—endless, exhausting, unresolved.
The tragedy is not that people get angry. Anger is human. The tragedy is that anger has become our dominant political language and pastime.
In this sense, Guanzon’s mall altercation is a parable of our times: a small spark igniting a familiar fire. A reminder that when politics abandons restraint, it does not stay confined to institutions. It spills into malls, jeepneys, comment sections, and family dinners.
A Nation at the Crossroads
Guanzon’s story—then principled, now polarizing—is unsettling because it forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: this is not simply her transformation. It is ours.
We risk being trapped in this divided nation, where a cough can trigger combat and a disagreement hardens into identity.
Guanzon’s vote once stood as a symbol of what we might have become as a nation. Her viral mall moment mirrors the country we are fast turning into.
Between Jekyll and Hyde, the choice remains ours.
Content & editing put together in collaboration with ChatGPT
Head collage photos courtesy of PGMN; art design by Canva
Still photos courtesy of Kobo, Adobe Stock, Shutter Stock, iStock, IMT, YouTube, GMA Network, Getty Images, & Philstar
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