A good book on Duterte s presidency

A month ago I sat in a panel evaluating the thesis of three graduating college students who did a content analysis of a national newspaper's portrayal of President Rodrigo Duterte in its editorials. Within that time I interacted with fellow panelist and UP Cebu Political Science professor Ronald Pernia in which he recommended a book about the Duterte presidency.

The book is titled "A Duterte Reader: Critical Essays on Rodrigo Duterte's Early Presidency" published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press. It's a collection of 16 essays edited by sociologist Nicole Curato with an introductory essay of her own, titled "We need to talk about Rody."

As one of those baffled by Duterte' rise to the national scene, I planned to buy a copy of the book before traveling to Mindanao, a promising good read while waiting for boarding calls at the airport. This deliberate timing is an exercise of reading the book and immersing in its featured locale -Duterte's origins and core support being in Mindanao- to make oneself a bit personally close to the story.

So when family obligation summoned me to travel to Mindanao last week to attend the wake and burial of a close relative on my father's side, I figured it was the right time to buy a copy of the book (the book is available at Fully Booked, Ayala.)

Prominent American author on Philippine history Alfred W. McCoy described the book as a collection of "essays by leading experts in diverse fields, that offers a penetrating portrait of a volatile administration poised between a troubled past and an uncertain future."

In the words of Maritess D. Vitug, indeed the book "packs a lot of rigorous thinking into its pages to give coherence to a man who eschews rigor and downgrades facts. Still, public intellectuals cannot shirk from their civic duty to civilize the national conversation."

What stuck in my mind, particularly in Curato's introductory essay in the book, is the view that the legitimacy of Duterte's regime lies primarily in its complex and negotiated relationship with the traditional state institutions, the elite, the media, and the public.

That negotiated relationship is shown in how the public, frustrated by the broken promises of EDSA and decades of bureaucratic inefficiency and persistent poverty, has tolerated Duterte's murderous presidency and its shoddy handling of the economy for as long as it can make a show of delivering its promises of law and order and efficient governance.

The book traces the astounding rise of Duterte from a successful mayor in a city traditionally wracked by violence and poverty, to a maverick and strong-handed president who months before being considered a serious presidential contender was seen dancing the 'Budots' with local boys in his signature "baduy" look, slightly baggy jeans and checkered shirt.

The book also explains the breakability of Philippine institutions that were reshaped by the liberal democratic principles espoused by the EDSA elite (Church, civil society, oligarchs, etc.) which emerged after Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown, and how the politically astute Duterte knew all along that "liberal democracy" was fragile and existing on borrowed time.

I urge you to get a copy of the book and read all the essays in it, if only to help steer the national conversation past the narrow and impassioned narratives for or against Duterte's populism and "illiberal democratic fantasies" - that also, by the way, exist on borrowed time; a mere blip in the Philippines' colored history if Duterte fails to deliver his end of the deal with the public.

‘I urge you to get a copy of the book if only to help steer the national conversation past the narrow and impassioned narratives for or against Duterte's populism.’