LOOKING back at my lifetime experience in news journalism, perhaps now is the most challenging period in all those 36 years where I had gotten myself embroiled with writing in support of a clamor for change.
I started five years in the news production which is to be heard and seen.
In other words, radio and television broadcast journalism after which I tried another challenging route of corporate communications for six years and nine more years in opinion column writing.
The world of sports came, giving me more experience and longer years of journo practice but everything remains complicated since it's not just about forming your own opinion. In sports writing you have to be where the action is in order to infect your readers with live action in active words. It is exciting, yes, but also inspiring where you get to work with people 40 to 45 years younger than you in your veteran age.
The other way to write the word veteran is better run. All those added 16 years of sports writing has slowed me down in terms of quantity but never giving up because sports is a running story.
In my earlier stint as opinion columnist it was also tricky to apply reverse psychology to a budding politician whose only ambition was to retire in government service as top prosecutor of the regional justice department.
Everybody, except his political nemesis, wants him to continue leading Davao City as mayor but he also declined saying he will not run.
We made a follow-up story on that with an innocent-looking caption in the opinion column entitled "Duterte will not run" but the whole story and the main point actually reads "Duterte will not run away from drug lords, kidnappers and common criminals.
We still can apply the same old lines in persuasive tenor, this time for a higher purpose of national scale. An intensified war against crimes and corruption can be effectively implemented by also reforming the whole system with a new federal type of government in place of our depraved, highly centralized unitary system.
Whether Rody Duterte was challenged or just playing coy with media, the unfolding events resulted in producing for the city the longest, most effective serving mayor in our country's political history. It didn't take him long to finally file his certificate of candidacy and went on for 22 years now to make Davao City into what it is today.
His wise, skillfully fixative employ of policies and conduct in the affairs of government is worthy of emulation and application looking at Davao City as a miniature Philippines.
In the city where Duterte was overseer for more than two decades is the place where everyone can witness a track record in governance full of common sense, compassion and courage.
