For Gen. Rommel Marbil, it was the day when the bottom fell out.

He deserves that lengthy rebuke from Vice President Sara Duterte for making a mountain of what she dismissed as a molehill that was the relief of her security detail.

“Subalit tila nakatatlong interview ka na patungkol sa akin (But it seems you already had three interviews about me),” she pointed out in the second paragraph of the four-page open letter. Compared to her crisp comment about the unceremonious recall, he indeed overplayed it.

What she said next set the tone for the rest of her letter.

“Sa isang banda, naiintindihan kita sapagkat natural lang sa mga nagsisinungaling na magkaroon ng sari-saring kwento at dahilan (On one hand, I understand because it is only natural for those who are lying to have different stories and alibis),” the Vice-President fired at him head on.

Marbil didn’t know what hit him. If he did, he would have responded to the scathing open letter like a man instead of skirting the press like a boy after Vice-Pres. Inday dressed him down.

It was all over right there and then. Even before the Vice-President confronted him publicly, Filipinos knew there was harassment written all over the relief. Indeed, if there was no threat against the country’s most popular official, why did he volunteer to replace them if she asked?

The no. 2 elected official confronted the highest-ranked police officer about a leaked video of her and her family at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport taken from a spot where only employees are allowed.

She also revealed that PNP operatives went to the place where she is staying to case it, surveillance in police parlance. Unlike the first, this is now a direct threat any way you look at it.

Vice-Pres. Duterte is right: “Is it not a threat if the harassment is perpetrated by people in government themselves?”

The problem with people calling the shots in this administration is not their shallow thinking but their belief that they can shove that same shallowness down on its citizens.

If there is one thing Marbil has done right so far, it is his decision to close his mouth. He has no answers to these and other issues raised by the Vice-President. The problem is that while he has chosen (ordered is more like it) to shut his mouth, the administration sends its barking dogs to come to his defense – or to step up in the offensive against Vice-President Inday. Nice try.

Marbil still has time, or chance to redeem himself before the men and women in uniform who look up to his post and regain some measure of respectability. The first thing would have been to own up to it like an officer and a gentleman.

“A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday,” said English poet Alexander Pope.

Sadly, Marbil probably never heard of him, and if he did, he could not summon the courage to apologize for the singular act that endeared him to his superiors but shamed him before the rest.

As of this writing, the Vice-President’s open letter generated 52,000 reactions, 24,000 shares and 6,200 comments. Not to mention that it boosted Sen. Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa’s reelection bid after he sounded the call for volunteers to secure Vice-Pres. Inday.

Unless he does something unthinkable, Marbil will be remembered for poking the eagle that is Vice-President Duterte. For this, Filipinos will eternally be grateful to him.