Trigger mouth and state policy
His old friends now in the Cabinet advise us not to pay too much attention to what President Duterte says; but to just watch what he does. The problem is that what the President of the country says is considered state policy not only by the media, but also by United Nations representatives and the diplomatic corps, including the US State Department.
Poor Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay had to do the backtracking on the President’s threat to pull out of the United Nations and form a new bloc with China, Africa, and other nations. President Duterte had said that the UN had not done anything for our country. What, after we just won our case on the UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) issue at the International Arbitration Court? Yasay, of course had to say it was not so. At least Duterte had the decency to apologize to Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno on his faux pas regarding who has power over the judicial system. Since he does not seem to have much capacity to own up to his mistakes, this must have been very difficult for him to do. And so we laud him for this magnificent gesture. It means that all is not lost.
The President has also in language most foul, disclosed information, or gossip, or military intelligence reports versus Senator Leila de Lima just when she was about to launch a Senate committee investigation into extrajudicial killings “in aid of legislation.” The hearings yesterday revealed gory details of how some police “assets” who were allegedly used as information sources and/or retail distributors of shabu were gunned down inside a police precinct. The more malleable House of Representatives has announced that Senator de Lima’s driver is going to be their state witness into their own investigation into the proliferation of drug syndicates at the New Bilibid Prisons during her term as Justice Secretary.
Somebody once told me a joke that says military intelligence is an oxymoron. So it is a good thing that investigations are going this way and that. Hopefully, somewhere in between the arguments and revelations, we will be able to glimpse the truth.
To go back to my point about presidential statements.
Instead of asking us to just accept the President’s idiosyncrasies, perhaps his Cabinet friends have an obligation to advise and counsel him, as his loyal friends, to be more circumspect and deliberate in reacting to criticism. Perhaps he should not have these early morning prolonged press conferences where perhaps out of fatigue, he gets provoked into making these wild statements. How to handle these rambling meetings should be discussed by his Cabinet and friends with him. After all, he competed freely and openly for his office and should have known what he was getting into.
Our country, in its own way, after the harrowing dictatorship that we overthrew on EDSA, has been slowly building institutions meant to safeguard our fledgling democracy with all its flaws: the Human Rights Commission, the legislature, the judiciary, the flamboyant and “free” media. These institutions, with all their human flaws, are meant to prevent the return of authoritarianism and the abuses of unchecked, unbridled power.
Democracy, in what form we have of it, is imperfect, and so it is important that the media, with He has the capacity to become a great president, if he does not mess things up.
At the same time, the President has taken positions on public issues that are arousing much public outcry, such as burying the plunderer and dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. He has vowed to obey the decision of the Supreme Court on the petitions filed before it by those opposed to the idea. Given its dubious history of violating the law (e.g., granting Senator Enrile bail on a non-bailable offense, granting Eduardo Cojuangco billions in coco levy assets on the grounds that there was “no evidence” that he was a Marcos crony, granting speedy bail to