“WE ALWAYS assume every day that there is a plot to kill the president.”
-- PNP Chief Oscar Albayalde
These are assumed or “given” in the life of a sitting president, including or especially President Duterte:
[] The threat of assassination, a risk that comes with being the most powerful official of the land, respected or loved by the majority but also hated by many people; and
[] Presence of a plot or plots. The president is the most tightly, rigorously guarded public official. Thus the killing must be planned, unless the assailant is a crackpot who’d strike randomly from a crowd (like Reagan’s shooter who carried a copy of “Catcher in the Rye” in his back pocket and a gun in hand).
When President Duterte said in a Sept. 11 “tete-a-tete” on national TV with his chief legal counsel Salvador Panelo that there’s a conspiracy to evict or kill him, that cannot be dismissively set aside.
President’s enemies
With all the killings of crime suspects, the sacking of public officials for alleged corruption, and his tirades against the Catholic Church and its God, not to mention the lament of wage-earners who blame the government for their economic misery, there must be people out there filled with hate huge enough to want to kill.
PNP chief Oscar Albayalde is right about assuming that the threat comes with the job, the territory. More so when the president spews out venom and infuriates his enemies most of the time he speaks with a live mic and the video cameras on.
Cause to be skeptical
Why the skepticism when he unwrapped the alleged plot to kill him? Not because he said it to someone who looked like a TV slapstick comedian. More from these:
[] Duterte’s penchant to joke, exaggerate and sometimes “bend facts a bit” to draw laughter or seize audience attention;
[] In that particular setting, when he was striking back at Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV over the revoked-amnesty fiasco, he could be suspected of cutting back on initial losses. He could be throwing the “bombshell” to explain the moves to jail the senator and to distract and lead the public to a larger issue: the president’s safety, not Trillanes’s “persecution.”
Scant details
The president has unlimited access to information, here and abroad, Albayalde said. But how much of what he tells the public, when his passion for revenge runs high, can the public not source to personal spite?
Duterte gave scant details: (a) the names of three groups, the Communist Party, the Liberal Party, and Trillanes; and (b) the “intel” that he said came from a foreign spy agency.
He cited wire-tapping and monitoring of digital traffic, routinely practiced by foreign spooks, with skill and capacity sharpened by new technology. But he needs to provide specifics and, if he has enough evidence, to charge the plotters since it is within the right of the state, through its leaders, to protect itself.
Not just for revenge
The point being: With adverse public reaction over the Trillanes debacle, it must be shown that the alleged plot was uncovered by solid fact-gathering. Or it might be seen as another stab of reprisal against the president’s enemies.
If going after one senator is complicated and disturbing, that intensifies if, on three fronts, they would hunt down leaders of communist rebels, Liberal Party pillars and the pesky Trillanes at the same time.