More like Marcos, not Cory Aquino

“Just like your heroine, President Corazon Aquino. (She) declared it. She was about to declare martial law but changed her mind in a few hours. She declared a revolutionary government.”

-- President Duterte, in an interview taped Oct. 13 and aired Oct. 14

There’s a huge difference between President Duterte’s assumption as president in 2016 and Corazon Aquino’s ascent to power in 1986. And between the revolutionary government Cory declared and the revolutionary government Duterte threatens to declare.

Cory’s revolutionary government came after a revolution. Although many people didn’t agree that it was a revolution, just an uprising by Manilans, the nation and the world recognized it as one, the “Edsa revolution”: dictator Ferdinand Marcos was ousted from Malacañang and his totalitarian government fell.

While there was an election, its fraudulent result, which declared Marcos the winner, was not what installed Cory as the new leader. It was the uprising, which sent Marcos and his family packing to flee the country.

Elected

President Duterte, in contrast, was elected by popular vote: his rivals and the people accepted the mandate. (He was elected by 16 million, he keeps saying that now.) And he is bound by the oath he took upon assuming office: “to preserve and defend (the) Constitution.”

And that Constitution does not grant the right to declare a revolutionary government, whose first effect would be to scrap the fundamental law and abolish the institutions under it. He might create a revolution. But, as American abolitionist Wendell Phillips put it, “revolutions are not made; they come.”

Coup vs. charter

A revolutionary government by Duterte would be a coup against the Constitution. Just like Marcos’s martial law of 1972 which he promoted as a constitutional revolution.

Under that form of government, the Constitution is reduced to a scrap of paper and all power would be wielded by a president or a military-police junta, depending upon how the power grab would play out.

Marcos tried to foist on the nation and before the world a constitutional authoritarianism. Adopting such farcical “democratic” methods as raising hands instead of using ballots or running an assembly filled with his allies. Duterte could try a democracy with revolutionary powers, as one Manila-based columnist suggests. Which would be an oxymoron: the form can’t coexist with suppressed basic liberties.

Lesson FM taught

The Marcos regime must instruct those who’d fiddle with a revolutionary government against the danger of the military and the police appropriating power for themselves, as well as the risk of abuses by those entrusted to run the country. With no checks and balance of a democratic rule, a despotic regime, however it is disguised or justified, is vulnerable.

But Duterte could just be rattling the cage of those who’d investigate and judge him and his family. That, or he is genuinely afraid of being ousted by the NPA and the Liberals (with the color code red and yellow). Last August, he spoke of a revolutionary government and what Cory did, saying “Go for it. Cory declared a revolutionary government but don’t look at me. I’m not going there.”

On tiger’s back

If he fears “de-stabilizers,” he should fear more riding on a tiger’s back, the well-worn metaphor for a dictator latching on to power by despotism. He could have a revolutionary government only if it would be propped up by the armed forces, whose leaders are trained to fire a gun, not to govern.

Cory insisted on her rule being just a transition for democracy’s return and, to her credit and luck, the tiger didn’t eat her up. After 37 years of stability and freedom since then, should the country take that road again?