PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte was catapulted into office in the May 2016 elections riding on a strong anti-corruption and peace and order platform.
Two years into his six-year term, he has managed to launch a brutal drug-war killing thousands of petty drug users and pushers mainly from the urban poor, declared martial law in the southern island of Mindanao, with the threat of extending this nation-wide in the name of the same peace and order objective.
His armed forces bombed to smithereens the only Islamic City in the country in an attempt to flush out IS-affiliated extremists while unleashing the dogs of war against communist insurgents after scuttling the once promising peace talks. In the meantime, the same economic policies that keep a big swath of the nation’s urban and rural poor remain in place.
The unraveling of the violent direction and dictatorial approach of Duterte took a little more than a year and these are all documented in close to about one hundred articles written by this author for this paper. Now that he has just delivered his third State of the Nation Address, it might be good to reflect on the articles written about him in this space as some sort of an assessment.
Witnessing the implosion of this administration was reflected in the changing tenor of the articles which actually mimic the stages of grief with a twist in the end - from a guarded optimism, to that of denial; and instead of acceptance in the end, a kind of righteous anger is arrived at over the failed promise of change. What follows is a brief assessment of these articles in review.
Duterte was off to a good start and seemed to deliver the correct positive political message in the first few months of his administration. But there was the expected reaction of dislodged political forces when Duterte’s new cabal took over. The initial political noise from this sector irked the new powers-that-be that their female figure-head from the Senate was unceremoniously hauled to prison. It was a portent of things to come, particularly, in how the president was onion-skinned and bares his fangs against those he considers as pet-peeves or threats.
A big part of the political developments of the past two years can be attributed to the unique personal character traits of Duterte that defines greatly his brand of politics. Note that in his first few months in office, he went from camp to camp and oversaw the doubling of military and police salaries and benefits. Like a feudal king marshalling his troops for a coming war, he made sure that his police and soldiers were well-fed and well-armed.
He has exhibited little patience for the slow processes of democratic consultations and the separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judiciary. In fact he has usurped the powers exclusively for himself in a telling move of his tyrannical approach to governance.
For sure, all that he has shown are his consistent belief and fidelity to his small-town leadership style that made him a legend in his fiefdom of Davao. He is the present-day incarnation of the boss-thug who command obedience and respect from a submissive and adoring public who now has the whole nation under his patriarchal spell. And the formula has worked so far.
We might wonder what made it possible for someone like Duterte to become president and what will undo him. Remember after the technocratic rule of Fidel Ramos, we had a populist figure of Erap Estrada assume presidency. The movie actor’s rise to the presidency was an expression of frustration over the cold neoliberal direction of Ramos’ Philippines 2000 after the failed promise of the Cory Aquino’s supposed revolutionary presidency. Erap was booted out by another faction of the elite who were disenfranchised by his emerging cronyism.
Duterte’s rise to power is made of the same recurring political narrative. The neoliberal failures of the Macapagal-Arroyo and then Pnoy Aquino’s administrations set the stage once again for the rise of a folksy populist leader into the highest position in the country.
But two years into his administration, Duterte has proven himself no different from earlier administrations in terms of promoting the interests of a different faction of elite rule especially in promoting neoliberal economic policies that exploit workers and indigenous resources for the superprofit of corporations. The continuing practice of contractualization that has resulted to strikes of workers all over and the displacement of indigenous communities in favor of mining interests especially in Mindanao, and the anti-poor TRAIN law are proof of this.
What should now worry Duterte is that the same politician that replaced Erap has just now assumed the fourth highest position in the land as Speaker of the House of Representatives. In the grand scheme of things, his popularity, just like Erap’s, is no match to the evil machinations that money and patronage could buy just to keep things going.
History is set to repeat itself again. For the intra-elite intramurals that is Philippine electoral politics, populist figureheads are replaceable anytime as long as major foreign and local economic interests remain protected.