Tempering our expectations of the Duterte presidency

EVERYONE

from both sides will agree that nobody during the 2016 campaign period expected the erstwhile unknown Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte to win. But he took the entire country by storm with his promise of ridding the country of crime, drugs, and corruption, rekindling the hopes of the masses for a better Philippines.

I strongly supported this president’s campaign without anybody in his campaign team knowing who I am (I was totally anonymous blogger until November, 2016) and I was among those who vigorously celebrated his May, 2016, victory. From the onset, however, I tempered my expectations because I am aware that the Philippine government minus President Duterte is still the same old lot.

Three years into his term, President Duterte has so far been quite successful in fulfilling some of his promises, though less so in a few others.

Duterte’s “Build, Build, Build” taught us that the government can actually take on ambitious infrastructure projects instead of just haphazardly widening roads here and there. His attempt at carving an independent foreign policy averted what could have been a full-scale war in the South China Sea. His drug war, despite the many criticisms against it, made shabu far more difficult to get in the streets.

We know he could have achieved more if the entire bureaucracy had his back. But bureaucratic inertia, or the tendency of bureaucrats to continue doing things the same way they did for years, is something that takes more than a presidential term to overcome. He promised that “Change is Coming!” but we all know that the government he inherited from the previous administration didn’t promise the same.

“Build, Build, Build” could’ve done a lot more to solve cataclysmic urban traffic but bureaucratic inertia in the Senate brought caused the emergency powers bill to suffer from chronic analysis paralysis.

He could’ve done more in exploiting the riches of the South China Sea, but bureaucratic inertia among many in the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Armed Forces led many to retain their historically pro-West, antiChina stance.

The drug war could’ve been more successful if not for the bureaucratic inertia in the police force, best evidenced by “ninja cops” who re-sell the drugs they confiscate.

At least three factors make overcoming bureaucratic inertia difficult for this President:

[1] security of tenure of civil servants per RA 6656, coupled with the extremely slow justice system that makes administrative cases take forever to resolve, makes removing recalcitrant officials next to impossible.

[2] the president himself admits to having a very limited network, leading him to appoint, wittingly or unwittingly, more than a few nincompoops.

[3] some of his less-than-honest appointees, some of them quite highranking, benefit from the old and corrupt way of running things so they’d rather let things stay the same.

I am telling you all these because I notice that a lot of administration supporters are setting themselves up for a major heartache as they adopt an overly romanticized view of the Duterte presidency.

Yes, Duterte is a great first step towards reawakening our mission to make this country a better place, but the Sick Man of Asia that is the Philippines needs quite a few more chemotherapy sessions after Duterte leaves Malacañang.

I am afraid that the tens of millions of erstwhile politically indifferent Filipinos, who Duterte helped awaken in 2016, may go back to their deep political slumber as soon as they realize that this administration failed to meet their unreasonably high expectations.

Take, for example, the problematic issue of salaries for government nurses.

The Supreme Court recently decided that public nurses should be under Salary Grade 15 and not the current Salary Grade 10 or 11, effectively saying they should be paid roughly P10,000 more. Hours later, Health Secretary Francisco Duque rained on the nurses’ parade when he said it won’t happen without extra funding from Congress. Shortly after Duque’s announcement, I saw netizens decrying the injustice (and it really is an injustice), with some saying that Duterte should find a way to comply with the Supreme Court decision.

Yes, the President indeed needs to encourage Congress to add funding, but the fact remains that he is not Congress. At the end of the day, the ones who shall decide whether nurses get paid more or not are those in Batasan Hills and Pasay City, the same lot that’s mostly made up of traditional politicians, the complete opposite of the Duterte who swept us off our collective feet.

Despite his foul language, I can confidently say that the President is doing his darned best to make the country better. However, we must remind ourselves of the bitter truth that he is just one man.

Do I regret supporting him? No, because he was the optimal choice at the time that I had to make a choice.

Do I still support him? Yes, because he is still, at the end of the day, the duly elected President of the Republic.

Am I disappointed in his performance? No, because he meets my expectations.

But there’s a catch: I expect a lot less than most.