EDITORIAL US, not Duterte, the real threat to democracy

A report by the intelligence community in the United States has tagged Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte as a threat to democracy. The report stopped short of saying which democracy was being threatened. Certainly the report could not be implying Philippine democracy. Not only was Duterte swept into power by a landslide victory in a democratic election, he continues to rate very highly in all democratically-conducted opinion surveys.

Apparently, the US intelligence community only paid attention to Duterte’s critics who naturally have nothing but fear and loathing for the president and completely ignored his continued acceptance by the far greater number of Filipinos whose trust and satisfaction in their leader matter more in any fair appreciation of democracy as experienced on the ground than what the intelligence community of any foreign country can only surmise from afar.

Besides, the intelligence community in the United States no longer commands the same awe and respect it used to enjoy. It continues to be good only in the movies. But in real life, one only has to look back to 9/11 and the other massive failures of intelligence to see that the once vaunted American intelligence has now actually ceased to be relevant.

Proof is its nitpicking on internal Philippine affairs when it could have damned China the moment it started to threaten global democracy with its very brazen inyour-face island-building in the South China Sea through which trillions of dollars in maritime trade passes. And if Russia truly meddled in the US elections, then clearly US intelligence now appears to have been the last to know.

And that makes US intelligence itself its own threat to American democracy for failing, again and again, to protect American democratic interests. In fact, to be very blunt about it, the United States is imploding as a democracy. The US has become a very real threat to itself. And one does not have to look far to see why. It is being played out on CNN every minute of every hour of every day.

America does not respect Donald Trump as its president despite his having been elected freely and in accordance with America’s own centuries-old democratic electoral processes to which every American who voted freely submitted. America blames Russia for Trump but could present no proof other than accusing it of taking out negative ads against Hillary Clinton and employing trolls on the internet, all of which, by the way, are American practices guaranteed by its own democratic freedoms.