It’s a Duterte thing
THERE’S an outrage especially among Davao folks against showbiz oldies Jim Paredes who likened the city to hell. Then became louder with the comment made by teleserye mainstay Agot Isidro describing President Rodrigo R. Duterte as a psychopath. We say, chill.
They’re not worth your aggravation, nor are they worth a bad start to a day. They are people with their own ideas and perceptions. That we are enjoying life in Davao City, despite the attempts to sow terror among us; that we rise up as one and help each other; that we are among the first ones to extend our hand to assist our fellow Filipinos in times of disasters only mean one thing: We can be proud of ourselves and the way our leaders have led us through the past decades.
Others can only wish they had what we have. Let’s be grateful for that and just let those who have not experienced such luxury blabber if they want to. They’re not getting anything away from us anyway.
This is an appeal to many Dabawenyos, who understandably tend to fly off the handle when Davao and the mayor president are harangued, chill, don’t bother, you know better where the level of trust is coming from.
Let’s spend our time making our city better, pushing local officials and national agencies to address pressing concerns like the worsening traffic problem, lobbying for that long-promised but never delivered flyovers in Ulas and Matina Crossing, and yes, thinking up ways of helping our communities and our country as we are very good at. Let the critics criticize, for as long as they are not hitting the mark, then they deserve pity rather than anger; and if they do hit the mark, then they’re just telling us where the problems are. Take all these in stride because we have more than five years more to go. Instead of picking up a fight with every person who does not like our President and our city, let’s just strive as one community to make our city even better. As a t-shirt design recently shared in social networks say: “It’s a Duterte thing, you (they) wouldn’t understand.”
We do hope that he will tone down his words, or at least keep quiet, though, because from everything that we are able to see, he’s doing everything right and government programs and projects are all going at full steam in the right direction as only he can demand. For that alone, let’s all chill. The greater outrage should be in the fact that, yes, narco-politics is real and in our midst.