"'Drag me to hell'

That was a riveting press conference by the bratinella last Friday. Some takeaways: Vice President Sara Duterte is truly her father's daughter.

- ANA MARIE PAMINTUAN

Unlike her father, she doesn't indulge in stream-of-consciousness diatribes; she has a wider vocabulary and picks her words better. But the same pugnacity and rudeness are there, with her expletive of choice not PI but the milder BS.

Now I can believe that former president Rodrigo Duterte isn't exaggerating when he says he's scared of his daughter, Inday Sara.

And now I can also believe their supporters who say the VP does have a strong sense of humor, although there's a dark nastiness even in her naughty grins, unlike the wicked, un-PC Pinoy humor that endears her father to the masses.

Maybe the nastiness is because the press conference was the VP's venting session against her enemies. Even her body language indicated her mood; she opened the event with stretching movements that reminded me of boxers waiting for the bell to ring the start of a match.

And she immediately threw a punch... line. Sniffling from the cold air-conditioning, she told reporters she was neither crying nor snorting cocaine.

What triggered the VP's outburst, it seems, was the comment of President Marcos about believing all along that they were friends. The VP had previously said they were never really friends, and that they simply teamed up for the 2022 race. Asked for comment, BBM said maybe he had been deceived.

In her press conference, the VP reiterated her take on the non-friendship, referring to BBM as "Mr. Deception" and giving him a score of one, on a scale with 10 as the best, in his performance as president. People have told her, she said, that the country "is on this road to perdition... we are in this road to hell."