SONA: Decoding Duterte
As a person who has been highly critical of President Duterte, allow me to deliver some shocking news to all Dutertrolls out there: I am not a “hater.” Haters want the person they’re “hating” to fail, the same way most humans had a legit paroxysm of glee over Taylor Swift’s fall from grace last week courtesy of Kim Kardashian and her now-legendary Snapchat account. Since I don’t want this country to suffer any longer,
Something happened in the middle of his two hour attention challenging, periodically offscript ramble-fest: We started to get the guy.
I am definitely not rooting for the failure of its President. I am also not a member of the “yellow army.” As documented well in this very publication you are currently reading, I was highly critical of the Aquino administration, too. This might seem like a mind-blowing idea to Dutertrolls, but criticizing presidents is a thing that happens and it has nothing to do with your feelings. It’s something objective people are bound to do, because the presidency is a quagmire of tough decisions, a lot of which are inevitably controversial. We don’t hate the player; we hate the game.
So like any objective being, I watched President Duterte’s first State of The Nation Address with the knowing cynicism that most of it will be PR bullsh*t and with the hopeful willingness to understand. Because I’m tired, you guys. I’m tired of the daily news of the summary executions of people who “may” be involved in illegal drugs, but I guess we’ll never know for sure because they’re dead now. I’m tired of people online (mostly Dutertrolls) brushing these murders off and filing them under categories “better dead bodies of criminals than of innocent people,” “they had it coming,” and “not me.”
The news, the comments section, and social media tend to bleed together in a toxic cocktail of information these days, so I wanted to hear from the man himself. Granted, looking forward to a Duterte SONA as a refreshing break from the soul-crushing pits of the news cycle is like seeking safety in the woods by hanging out with a bear. After all, this is the same dude whose idea of a heroic story is a rape joke and who openly threw a tantrum against the media for a solid week. But you play with the cards you’re dealt and this is the kind of game where you get the same hand for the next six years. ‘NO DWELLING ON THE PAST’
So, the SONA begins and we’re off to an inauspicious start. With the image of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s from-hospital-arreststraight-to-the-salon face still fresh in our minds, Duterte promised to “not waste precious time dwelling on the sins of the past.” “Lest I be misunderstood,” he continued, suddenly sounding like a Shakespearean character, “those who betrayed the people’s trust shall not go unpunished and they will have their day in court.” So, be accused of plunder and electoral fraud: You are entitled to due process. Be accused of drug trafficking: death, preferably at the hands of anonymous cowards.
Lesser men would’ve walked away or crumbled under the weight of so much bristling, but I toughed it out. We have six more years to go, I thought to myself, and there’s no way I can sleepwalk through the rest of the decade (I might get shot, for one thing), so I’m just going to take my medicine like a man.
Then something happened in the middle of the two-hour attention-challenging, periodically off-script ramble-fest: I started to get the guy. It helped that I really liked a lot of what he said, and I’m not just talking about the free public Wi-Fi that we all know is going to be hilariously slow and practically useless anyway. I liked that he acknowledged the plight of Muslim Mindanao as an “historical injustice.” I liked that he wants to get rid of long queues in government services. And most of all, I liked that he seemed really genuine. Even his renunciation of corruption, compared to P-Noy’s hackneyed sloganeering, felt authentic, as he momentarily discarded the teleprompter to speak on an almost personal level, as if the nation were a group of buddies
who just reached the “serious” portion of its drinking session. “Ako po’y nagdo-doble ang pagod para sa inyo, para sa kapakanan ng bayan. Seryoso po ako,” he said, in a way that didn’t feel rehearsed. You believe him. And you start to see why so many people believe in him. THE DUTERTE CHARM
I think I finally saw the Duterte charm that has inspired so much devotion. He doesn’t have the fascist demagogue vibe of Donald Trump; what he has is the simple folksy charm of a barangay chairman who’s been friends with your family for decades and knows everyone in your neighborhood. He has this inexplicable “dude you can trust” way about him that I think partly explains why so many Filipinos are willing to do incredible logical gymnastics just to defend him. And for a moment, I felt gifted by that boundless well of understanding. When he mocked the wife of the slain suspect that made headlines a day before as a “Mother Mary cradling the dead cadaver of Jesus Christ,” my liberal heart bled like it had after every Duterte diatribe. But this time, a strand of light slipped through to show where he was coming from. The man means well, I thought, so much so that he reduces everything to simplistic terms of black and white, good versus evil, because he truly believes this is the most expedient path to righteousness. He believes the alleged drug pusher really is a pusher, due process be damned, and he has no time to grieve for the evil ones who make life difficult for the good ones. It’s really that simple for him. And when you are tired, like millions of Filipinos are, you just want something simple. I’m tired, too. Reductive simplicity has never been so seductive.
But a day later, in the harsh light of the morning news: The family of murdered honor student and church choir member Rowena Tiamson cries for justice. Her dead body was found a week before, bearing the now all-too-common cardboard sign:
“Huwag tularan. Pusher.” She was not on the PNP’s drug watchlist, as confirmed by local police, who believe the murder was a case of mistaken identity.
I think I now understand Duterte, but I also still understand the Tiamsons, other families of the hundreds killed over the last few months in the name of Duterte’s holy drug war, and yes, even Jennelyn Olaires, that grieving wife who our President dismissed as “nagda- drama.” The lure of reductive simplicities lies in its ability to pare down nuances to the simplest truths. The dangers posed by criminality and drugs are truths, but so is the value of human life and the impossibility of entrusting justice to an armed group whose motives remain unknown. There are many truths in this world and we cannot just choose the ones that are most convenient, the ones that make sense in our air-conditioned cars, in our gated villages, in our heavily-secured offices, in our cushy middle-class lives that exist miles away from the reality of perverted street justice.
I think the President’s job is not to make issues simpler, but to navigate through the nuances, because these exist in the real world, and acknowledging them, while more intellectually taxing, is actually the more pragmatic approach. I know the President means well. I can see that now. And I know we’re all tired. But I guess it’s not wrong to expect more stamina from the leader of our nation. You can’t be tired like us, Mr. President. You need to try harder.
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