For better or worse
OUR president is turning out to be the most perplexing and divisive figure to have emerged out of the fetid waters that is contemporary Philippine politics. His every pronouncement ignites passionate debates between camps. And mind you, we are not talking about just two diametrically opposed groups but varying levels of support, from critical collaboration to outright rejection from Filipinos and foreigners alike.
This is the reason why a flurry of online skirmishes and a few real life battles follow his policy pronouncements, like the public debate that is still raging after the recent incident at the US Embassy when indigenous people supporting his independent foreign policy pronouncements were violently dispersed by the police. And the multiplicity of positions on these varying issues only make the political noise louder.
In the recent Asean forum, Duterte’s notoriety debuted and crossed over from being an idiosyncratic feature of the Wild West sensibilities of Philippine politics to the world stage when he raised American hypocrisy on the issue of human rights before stunned world leaders including Obama in attendance.
Since then, the international press has turned a keen eye towards Duterte and the Philippines. In the last weeks, our president has become the poster boy of anti-American hegemony in Asia to the great discomfort even anger of some of his political allies. For this distinction, he has graced the cover of a French tabloid depicted as a serial killer because of his drug war and he has also been the subject of a number of editorial pieces in renowned publications abroad.
International media’s assessments fluctuate from being outright demolition jobs to more reflective pieces. For instance, the Boston Globe published an essay on Duterte that had a welcome tenor, calling America to task for her excesses in these islands a hundred years earlier. With Duterte’s dramatic announcement of his intention to pivot away from the former colonial ruler to other superpowers while at a state visit in China, he has once again turned the global spotlight on to his administration.
Duterte has a polarizing effect to various audiences both here and abroad and many attribute this to his “colorful personality,” an understated observation from the US president when they met at the Asean forum in Laos. Many attribute the uncharted political waters that the country now finds itself in to his maverick ways.
Duterte and his charismatic leadership has brought the nation to this heightened schizophrenic state where peace talks against the long-standing communist insurgency that has the potential to overhaul Philippine society and economy take place side-by-side with a brutal drug war undertaken by a fascistic police.
The US Embassy incident was the result of the meeting of these two worlds. We are also at a unique juncture when government-backed agrarian reform and responsive delivery of government social services show much promise of results with genuine advocates at the helm in the persons of Secretary Paeng Mariano and Judy Taguiwalo. At the same time, their tenure in the cabinet is shared with the usual right-wing neoliberal personalities that push for disastrous private-public partnerships.
A US-based scholar and writer made a keen observation that follows the same tact. Duterte’s utter disregard for human rights that victimize thousands of country’s urban poor in his war against drugs undercut his moral right to rail against US imperialism. He does not have right to call out American abuse when he is prone to do the same things to his people, according to the writer.
By all indications, the world now looks at the Philippines as one big happy mess courtesy of our newly elected leader. But instead of attributing all of these to the unusual and unexpected ways of our president, I wager that the relationship is the other way around. What we are in fact experiencing is the current state of the Filipino nation as reflected in Duterte.
It is not that Duterte has transformed the country as such. But the country has been brought to such a state by various historical forces and Duterte and the frenzy and schizophrenia he brings are merely symptomatic of this new state.
I doubt if this has ever happened before, that an elected leader mirrors all the contradictions of a society in his persona to such an accurate degree. A product of Mindanao and the demands of leadership in the southern island, the happy mess that is Duterte is a reflection of the varied dispositions, hopes, frustrations and aspirations of a nation of 16 million voters that put him in power, for better or for worse. Sun.Star CDO