A coup of his own

Authoritarian rule has never been the instrument of real change, only of the illusion of it.

Is President Rodrigo Duterte preparing a coup d’etat à la Marcos against the Republic and himself as a democratically elected president?

It was a joke, but like Mr. Duterte’s other off-hand remarks and past one-liners, it had an edge of seriousness in it.

Announcing that he would appoint Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief of Staff General Eduardo Año to head the Department of Interior and Local Governments ( DILG) once the latter retires from the military, Mr. Duterte said in Filipino that he would fill a still vacant post in the Cabinet with another military man to complete “my junta.”

He went on to say that the military would then have no need to launch a coup d’etat because “they’re already in the government; they would be in charge.” “As for me,” Mr. Duterte went on, “I’m tired,” which could mean he’s tired of being president, or tired of the legal limits to his power that prevent him from doing what he wants.

The Duterte joke would have passed into the growing collection of his puzzling and outrageous, apparently unrehearsed remarks during similar public occasions if it weren’t so close to describing how militarized his regime is turning out to be. If Año and the still unnamed, other military nominee were indeed appointed to the Cabinet, they will be the ninth and tenth government officials with military backgrounds in the Duterte administration.

In a distressingly rightward, calculated shift in his environmental policies, Mr. Duterte earlier named Roy Cimatu, who was AFP chief of staff from 20012002, to replace Gina Lopez as Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources ( DENR). His National Security Adviser, Hermogenes Esperon, was also AFP chief of staff. So was National Irrigation Administration Chief Ricardo Visaya.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana is a retired Army general. The head of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, Ricardo Jalad, is also an Army retiree. Occupying less prominent government posts are Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon, who incidentally was once involved in a coup attempt during the Gloria MacapagalArroyo regime; Sweepstakes General Manager Alexander Balutan; and National Food Authority Administrator Jason Aquino. All were also in the military.

These appointments are consistent with Mr. Duterte’s declaration, made on several occasions, that he prefers to appoint officials who’re former military men, on the assumption that they’re as ruthlessly efficient as he fancies himself to be. But these appointments also suggest how seriously he’s taking rumors of an impending coup — and even more significantly, seem part of a preemptive strategy to prevent military attempts to oust him from power.

As astute as that strategy may be, its implications are nevertheless serious enough for Mr. Duterte to reconsider further packing his administration with officials with a military background. Trained and ideologized by a military establishment that has evolved into a major power broker in Philippine governance and politics, his appointees already constitute a formidable force for social and political stasis — for keeping things the way they are, or even restoring long discredited public policies and practices.

But to expect Mr. Duterte to stop appointing human rights violators, defenders of dynastic rule and agents of imperial hegemony to critical posts may be a misplaced hope. No general has publicly declared disdain for human rights, but Mr. Duterte has done so. No general will declare a preference for restoring the death penalty and for hanging, but Mr. Duterte has said so on numerous occasions. No Philippine president since Ferdinand Marcos has ever openly declared that he might place the country under Martial Law, but Mr. Duterte has several times said he would do it despite Constitutional limits — he has even threatened to “disobey” the Supreme Court if it rules against his policies — if it will halt what he claims is the country’s descent to imminent ruin due to the drug problem.