ORLANDO CARVAJAL:
Overall, the SONA provided me with two significant insights. First, Duterte did not claim any accomplishment. Instead, he stressed that he cannot accomplish anything without the people’s cooperation, thus hinting that whatever accomplishment he makes is ultimately the people’s accomplishment. Second, the SONA portrayed a president who is nobody’s puppet. He is not the face of a party or of a social class. He thus does not mind being maligned by local or international enclaves. What matters is that he is doing what he wants done to move the country forward. He clearly wants to make a difference.
There were no surprises from both substance and form in President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s (PRRD) State of the Nation Address (Sona). Hence, it was no surprise that immediate reactions to it did not cross longdrawn battle lines between his supporters and bashers. The left in fact rejected the Sona even before it was delivered.
This is too bad for the nation because the president happened to press what folks with no hidden politico-economic agenda can easily agree on as the right buttons in the engine of government. (For this, I will gloss over the “un-presidential” moments that bashers will surely pounce on from somewhere darkly political.)
The evils of drug abuse, for instance, are certainly something decent folks should have no problem recognizing. If so, then PRRD made a convincing point of asking virulent critics to spend their time instead in looking for ways they can help the government’s war against drugs like using whatever moral ascendancy they have over their people to help with prevention of drug abuse and/or rehabilitation of its victims.
He hovered longest over the issue of the environment that he said should be protected from destruction specifically by irresponsible mining. Upset at mining’s destruction of rice fields and rivers that are the source of food of poor rural folks, he warned, to the applause of the entire hall, big and mighty mining corporations to either find ways to restore the land mining has ravaged to its pristine richness or he will “tax them to death.”
He probably broke protocol on the next point when he, albeit as courteously as he could under the circumstances, looked the Chief Justice in the eye and implored her to take action on the TRO (filed by the bishops really but PRRD did not say) against the Reproductive Health Law that has been unsettled for two years now. Meanwhile medicines bought to implement this law are now expiring. Meanwhile, poor parents are prevented from effectively accessing their right, as PRRD spelled out, to decide on the number and spacing of the children they can afford to feed and educate.
Overall, the Sona provided me with two significant insights. First, PRRD did not claim any accomplishment. Instead, he stressed that he cannot accomplish anything without the people’s cooperation, thus hinting that whatever accomplishment he makes is ultimately the people’s accomplishment.
Second, the Sona portrayed a president who is nobody’s puppet. He is not the face of a party or of a social class. He thus does not mind being maligned by local or international enclaves. What matters is that he is doing what he wants done to move the country forward.
He clearly wants to make a difference. His high-wire act tells us he means it.