Give Duterte the break for a people’s revolutionary government

HOW lonely can the President’s job be. On his signature anti-illegal drugs campaign for instance, just when he thinks he has accomplished much at the job, attested to by the thousands of drugs users and pushers, including big drug lords, arrested and placed in rehabilitation centers and in jails across the land, here comes this controversy over a “drugs queen,” who it turns out corners posses

the campaign, putting it back into the illegal drugs trade — as though the President has not gone into any campaign against it at all.

The incident happens in the wake of the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) controversy whereby heinous crime convicts were able to avail of the Good Conduct Time Allowance, or GCTA, granted by Republic Act 10592 to prisoners showing, as the law’s title suggests, good conduct during their incarceration. The law has given top elements in the BuCor reasons to make fat money from early release of convicts for heinous crimes who are otherwise unquali

After the illegal drugs trade, the next social ill that stared President Duterte in the face was corruption. The malady is widespread, both the high-level kind in government and the general scale among the people.

I thought I saw how prevalent corruption is, for instance, at the

one morning I had a hard time getting a jeepney ride from Antipolo.

“Where have all the jeepneys

in a taxi I had managed to grab. “

( There is an ongoing campaign to apprehend colorum jeepneys, so none of them came out),” went the cabbie’s answer. I gape in utter awe. Considering the pile of stranded passengers along the entire length of the highway, it would appear that all those jeepneys that had been serving this daily load of passengers during none-apprehending periods were colorum ones.

Corruption is everywhere, and the President, one morning waking up gawking at its entire breadth and height and width, has come to admit that he seems powerless against it.

At one point, the President is heard uttering words of lament to this effect, “

(I give up. I’m tired.)” Intriguingly enough, such presidential exasperation took place within the period of the controversy resulting from the so-called ram

was a case in which the President must take a strong position against China, and it was surely with this in mind that his critics, particularly known former Foreign secretary Albert del Rosario and Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, urged the President to do, so that in so doing he inevitably would delve into pushing the so- called Philippine victory in its arbitration suit against China at the so- called United Nations-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) at The Hague.

But being a lawyer, the President should be well aware that the perceived Philippine victory in the arbitral case is an empty one.

To begin with, China had never recognized the PCA proceedings. It had made its position clear that it would not accept whatever ruling it would conclude and that such a position will not change. To push such a ruling with China would only mean one thing — war.

We could only sympathize with the President’s feeling of helplessness when, during the period, he blurted out to his critics sarcastically: “Okay you want war. Let’s do it. Let the United States declare war with China. And we will be behind you. Send the Seventh Fleet here. We will all ride there. And attack China.”

To pressure the President into taking such a stand against China strikes us as a supreme kind of corruption. It coerces him into betraying the trust placed in him by the people for holding high at all times their safety, well-being and interests

The conclusion of a deal between President Duterte and President Xi Jinping for oil exploration at the Recto Bank under a 60-40 percent sharing arrangement, in favor of the Philippines, indicates that the

- rect bearing on the China-Philippine dispute over the South China Sea. No pushing of sovereignty issues; mutual sharing in the exploration and exploitation of natural resources. Everybody happy.

But then because the deal is good for China, it must be bad for the United States, which is now scrambling for a gracious way out of the debacles wrought by Trump’s ill- conceived trade war against China. That war has proven to be a lot more disastrous both to American businessmen and American consumers than to China’s own. One effective way out is increased military hostilities between the two countries. If the Philippines could be goaded enough into pushing the PCA ruling, then with the outbreak of hostilities between China and the Philippines, America has all the reason to intervene militarily under its 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) with the Philippines.

It is easy for President Duterte to cause the abrogation of the MDT if only he so wills it. According to its provisions, the President of one party my just send a written notice to the President of the other party that it wants the treaty abrogated, and presto, without need of a reply for such notice, after a lapse of one year, the treaty is deemed abrogated.

At last Sunday’s airing of “

- lution,” over Radyo Pilipinas, I raised the question: “Why has President Duterte not written such a notice in order for the MDT to be abrogated?” I sort of insinuated that President Duterte must be executing a tightwire balancing act between China and the US — which are the real parties-ininterest in the South China Sea con

has still got a pro-US sentiment for all his apparent pro-China turnaround at the start of his term.

The host of the show, Ferdie Pasion, tended to disagree with that insinuation. He said there are pressure groups working on the President such that he just could not go all out in correcting the many Philippine social ills rendered incorrigible by the country’s flawed political set-up. The main sponsor for that political system, the US, would not want it disturbed, lest it loses its grip on the country for good. Just the way things are now in the country — poor, underdeveloped, its rich natural resources ever subject to rapine by American imperialists and their cohorts — is what’s favorable to the US agenda of controlling this Asiatic part of the globe.

That reminded me of information from a reliable source that the President is partial to establishing a revolutionary government, seeing it as the only way to bring about sorely needed radical reforms. This would mean shaking off the US for good and make good for all eternity our friendship with neighbor China.

The trouble is, President Duterte hasn’t got the necessary people power base to do it. So, I proposed to Ferdie: If that’s the kind of break the President needs, let’s give it to him.

I announced to the listeners my draft of “A Program for a People’s Revolutionary Government.” That could be a good starting point.