Strongman Duterte? Really?

Whenever we come across the term "strongman" we are always confronted with opposing attributes. According to history, the rise of a state can be attributed to the strength and wisdom its leader but its fall to the morass of its disquietitude and poverty is traceable the folly of its "strongman." After all, the success of the earliest known communities was the handiwork of those who stood out as the strongest and wisest, while most failures among governmental structures were inflicted by the strongmen.

I thought negatively when I first heard of the news that President Rodrigo Duterte was given that title by Time magazine. President Duterte, a strongman? Really? Given that title only after two years, he must have done something extraordinary to be lumped alongside Vladimir Putin who is on his sixteenth year as the leader of Russia.

While the late president Corazon Aquino was given praiseworthy titles by international media following the People Power Revolution, one person described in ignominious terms as a strongman was the late president Ferdinand Marcos. He got that description after declaring martial law in 1972. We had seen his rule for about seven years already when the opposition began calling him a strongman. The connotation was negative. I am not certain, though, that Plaza Miranda attack can be attributed to Marcos.

In any case, let me disregard the exposition of Time magazine even if I adopt the term "strongman." Whether we like it or not, it takes a great deal of strength for any president to declare war against drugs. Standing against such a campaign are drug lords, well-entrenched politicians, and thousands of pushers. Duterte's sworn enemies are somewhat innumerable and seemingly faceless. The war, in order to succeed, has to be combative, relentless, and bloody. In the early days of the campaign, lost lives began to pile up at a rate that was tolerable to many, not including me. When the number breached triple digits, we got alarmed for we found no viable explanation for the murders. Within the framework of extrajudicial killing observable, we suspected there was an unwritten directive from Malacañang to rid all those in the drug trade, no matter what. These killings were indicative of the modus operandi of a strongman.

The misfortunes thrown in the way of Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno are by no means accidental. They arose out of careful planning. No lowly citizen can just stain the image of any chief justice and get away with it. He must be so highly placed as to be able to move all the pieces in a political chessboard. And, each time a denial of any involvement comes from Malacañang, the vision of a strongman looms bigger.

What appears to be a relieving scene was the declaration by Duterte that he is not a strongman in the context that many of us are afraid of. If he, this time, means what he says, despite the many incredible statements he made, then we might not suffer the horrors strongmen bring to their peoples.