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little over a year ago, I was one of those who gave Duterte and his administration the benefit of the doubt. Within that short span of time then and now, given intervening events that followed, I have found myself, just like many others, increasingly taking on a steady and sure-footed conviction on the troubling direction his administration has been taking.

It was a naïve hope but it was fuelled by the belief that maybe, a president would come around with a deep and unfaltering commitment to the achievement of peace in this land. Many thought it was this guy who was born in the bosom of a war-torn land, he who was intimate with its causes such as landlessness and poverty in Mindanao and the rest of the country.

But more than a year into his term, it is clear that he is merely just mirroring the distortions of these structural realities in his presidency. He has failed to rise above the forces that define an elitist and violent nation-state and has, in fact, marshaled government’s vast resources in waging a violent war against its own people.

History should note how many violent fronts the Duterte presidency has so far opened up in just the first year of his presidency. The much-vaunted drug war has so far been revealed to be a state-sanctioned killing spree of poor addicts and pushers who now count tens of thousands among the urban poor sector as their victims. 17-year old Kian de los Santos’ murder caught on CCTV has revealed this initial suspicion to be true and has emboldened witnesses to come out and attest to the brutality of these extrajudicial killings perpetrated by the agents of the Philippine National Police.

The war in Marawi that has placed the whole of Mindanao under martial rule is another front that Duterte has opened up and it is a conflict that he himself admits has the potential to spread in other parts of Muslim Mindanao. Now entering its fourth month, what has been achieved so far in the name of a precarious peace and order situation? Apart from increasing the stock of the ISIS-affiliated Maute group before a new generation of disenfranchised Moro youth, the flattening of Marawi City and the destruction of homes and livelihood will also add to the increasing fodder for conflict in the South.

The scuttling of the promising peace talks with the Left with government’s insistence on surrender before tackling comprehensive socio-economic reforms has also opened up anew many rural areas in the country to become the new battlegrounds between Duterte’s army and the NPA. The war-footing has been made by the president himself who declared that after the Marawi-siege, the communist rebels will be his army’s next targets. He has also warned that martial law in the entire country will be declared given the increasing communist threat in the urban areas.

To complete the fronts opened up for war, Duterte has also declared a war against our nation’s history. He has done this by his approval of a hero’s burial for the corrupt and brutal strongman at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. By resuscitating and revising the despised memory of the dictatorship and white-washing it, he has in effect denigrated the memory of a generation of gallant Filipinos who fought the dictatorship and sacrificed their lives for the nation. Entering into a compromise agreement with the Marcoses only adds salt to these wounds.

In all these fronts that he has opened up for war, he has time and time again publicly announced his reliance on his military and the police. Not only does this indicate a terrible lack of intelligence and imagination- to reach for the iron hand to resolve every social problem- but it also reveals the compulsion to authoritarianism at every turn.

It seems that his regular visits to all the military camps in the first months of his administration, showering them with guns and cash gifts, and other rewards that has since been revealed to be the motive behind the extrajudicial killings of state forces in urban poor communities in the name of the drug war, were part of plan that is unraveling. We are being set up for dictatorial rule and the armed forces are being mobilized to be his private army.

This is more than a letdown actually. This is actually a case of having our worst nightmares coming true. Once again, another generation of Filipinos is called to resist and fight in all fronts what is shaping to be the recurring specter of a dictatorship.