The coup and GMA’s return to power
THE change in leadership of the House of Representatives, with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of Pampanga ousting Pantaleon Alvarez of Davao City as House speaker, must have taken a lot of wind from President Duterte’s 2018 State of the Nation Address yesterday, Monday (July 23).
The drama and tension of the coup sapped public energy to listen to the Sona and when it came, there was not much in it to lift the nation’s spirit or calm its fear. No stunning announcements, no big-ticket surprises.
After the hype and tension the coup had set off, delaying the President’s speech for more than an hour, the Sona would have to be exciting and invigorating to seize full public attention.
Factors against
It did not meet many people’s expectations. The plausible reasons:
* The writing was less than outstanding. Apparently, the Presidential Communication Operations Office still had not found the kind of speech writers whom Harry Roque, the president’s spokesman, said Malacañang needed to improve Duterte’s principal messages. Surely not the caliber of Peggy Noonan in US Pr esi d en t Ronald Reagan’s term or Teddyboy Locsin in President Cory Aquino’s time. The speeches Noonan and Locsin crafted grabbed and moved audiences. * Duterte has never been good in reading written script. His forte is departing from text and spicing it with anecdotes, jokes and vernacular tough talk. He finished it early this time and mercifully so. As to what he read on the teleprompter: few or none created moments that made the speech soar and take the audience with it.
* The Sona failed to address major public concerns and offer the people enough solace: no specific solution planned or done to curb rising prices, feeble assurance about stopping China’s military buildup on territory the international court says belongs to us, and continuation of the drug war with no guarantees against extrajudicial killings.
Scene from ‘Thrones’
And then there was the pre-Sona tableau that seemed to have been lifted from the TV serial “Game of Thrones.” GMA, who was detained for nearly four years of hospital detention before the Supreme Court acquitted her of plunder, some netizens noted, rose back to power ala Queen Cersei. Once her assumption is formalized, GMA will regain some of the power she once held as president from 2001 to 2010. They cited that GMA also took over from then evicted president Erap Estrada and served his unexpired term. This time it is the crushed Alvarez whom she steps on to occupy one of the highest public offices of the land.
Elephant in the room
The pre-Sona interlude could’ve provided material for Duterte to help the audience, in Congress and across the nation, get over the trauma of witnessing a duel over power. The President must have thought he’d be meddling with an
internal dispute or he just had no idea how to do it without violating his self-imposed rule to stick to what the ghost writers produced. He avoided the elephant in the room.
The much larger feat would have been to give the nation stronger comfort than what his Sona did. By showing more convincingly that his programs would steer the nation from further suffering and harm. And he would lead us through the dark night of transition to another system of government, perhaps another way of life.