EVERYONE thought we were in for interesting times if Duterte would win. And it seems he has exceeded expectations in this regard. Almost 100 days into his administration, this is now the emerging national consensus. It is consistent too, and maybe even surpassing the most exaggerated predictions of what many people thought would happen, if the politician from Davao were to beat his pedigreed and moneyed rivals.
A year ago, a Duterte presidency was unimaginable. Judging from the bitter political drama playing out nowadays in national media, there are apparently sectors who still have not come to terms with the fact that an outsider from the country’s traditional centers of power, was able to pull off a convincing win in what were otherwise rigged cycles of national electoral exercises. We can say that the bitter political rivalry of the last elections was just a preview to the social rifts that would continue to gnaw at the fabric of this nation even with a new elected leader at the helm.
Unlike his rivals who had the backing of the section of the national elite and even that of entrenched foreign interests, the odds were stacked against him with no national machinery and electoral resources to his name, But as the survey results showed him at the top a few months before the scheduled elections, it is expected that the different power brokers scrambled to seek positions of influence within his inner circle through the usual route of providing campaign support and allegiance.
Three months into the Duterte administration, there is now evidence of the varying success of these groups in penetrating the new dispensation. The Arroyo bloc seem to have benefitted the most after they were able to secure the former president’s freedom including her controversial assumption of the position of Deputy House Speaker in the Duterte-controlled congress.
The Marcoses also capitalized in their close personal friendship with Duterte in another attempt to regain national prominence through the candidature for vice president of Bongbong Marcos. With the dictator’s son’s defeat, the trade off was the burial of the father in the national heroes cemetery to which Duterte already gave the green light for. However, various forces outside and within Duterte’s own camp successfully blocked this indefinitely by lodging an appeal to the Supreme Court.
Where we are now as a nation is a state beyond interesting actually. And the main reason why there is a degree of unpredictability, therefore, an unmistakable opportunity for change in the workings of a semi-colonial, semi-feudal state is that Duterte has shown he is of a different mold as the country’s leader.
While he is an astute politician willing to pay political debts on the one hand, as displayed in his handling of the Arroyos and the Marcoses, he is also capable of steadfastly asserting his own political programs as the country’s charismatic leader. His consistent openness to the Left, his insistence on an independent foreign policy, and his raze-to-the-ground approach to the drug menace are just some of the examples of his bullheaded nature, which either augurs well or disastrous to the nation depending on which side of the political fence you belong to.
Public administration scholars and political scientists should have a field day in dissecting the strengths and weaknesses of the Duterte administration, particularly in how the future of the nation now hinges on the character traits of the man himself. His governance is not driven by any kind of cut and dried ideological program defined by economic managers or national security advisers. Previous administrations can be easily categorized to have been neoliberal with a smattering of old cacique dispositions. But Duterte is a different animal altogether.
It used to be that governance in this nation was shaped largely by the negotiations of the traditional centers of power which include big business interests and their sponsored politicians, the landed oligarchy, and as the drug war now reveals, the deep and long tentacles of narcopolitics. The president was just the momentary figurehead of these elite-led intramurals. Now, you have Duterte alone at the center, and his maverick appreciation of what the country needs.
This new development challenges us to look at the processes of how leaders such as Duterte are shaped by historical and social contexts as well. The inertia of political institutions, one that is shaped by decades of practice, is a given. But there are occasions when the rise of a peculiar leader, shaped by his experience within the political field, challenges the logic and practice of governance by his sheer force of will.
Duterte is a product of the same moribund political culture. But because of him and through the lessons he learned within it, and with the significant nudge of the mass movement, governance just might undergo a process of transformation - one that we sorely need as a nation that has long suffered under the neglectful leadership of our country’s elite.
But we must expect the traditional centers of power and their foreign partners to offer resistance at every turn. For them, Duterte is an aberration that must be stopped.