Fighting words

It must be a Pavlovian response for this President: he sees a camera and he wants to pick a fight. And so the penultimate State of the Nation Address opened with fighting words… not against the COVID-causing SARS-coronavirus-2, but against Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon, for daring to attack the dynasty in Davao.

Drilon, swearing on his parents’ graves, vehemently denied the accusation, explaining that he had not singled out any particular dynasty. He pointed out that he had in fact filed an enabling bill four years ago, before Rodrigo Duterte became president, to implement the provision in the 33-year-old Constitution banning political dynasties.

After letting out yet another mouthful against the oligarchs from Drilon’s home province of Iloilo, ABS-CBN’s Lopez clan, as well as the Ayalas for controlling water and electricity services since the Spanish period, Duterte said that if lawmakers wanted to ban dynasties, they should pass the enabling law.

On the other hand, he could also enable the passage if he told his allies in the House super majority to do it, as part of his legislative agenda for the second regular session of the 18th Congress.

There was no mention of an anti-dynasty bill, however, in his long list of over 20 priority measures.

Duterte is a pragmatic President, and he has been a congressman, so he probably knows it’s a waste of political capital to push for an anti-dynasty bill. The 17th Congress, under his supporter Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, unceremoniously trashed the draft federal constitution prepared by the consultative committee on Charter change, which included an anti-dynasty provision.

*** Duterte’s fighting words extended beyond the Lopezes’ ABS-CBN, water and power utilities (bought from the Lopezes by Manuel Pangilinan) to the telecommunications duopoly (now with a third player).

The pandemic quarantine has highlighted the weakness of the country’s digital connectivity. Alibaba’s Jack Ma summed it up during a visit to Manila in 2017: in front of telcos executives, he said Philippine internet speed is “no good.”

Now Duterte has given the telcos a December 2020 deadline to shape up or the government will take over. Considering the record of the government in managing public utilities, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. But many people are undoubtedly hoping that Duterte has sufficiently spooked the telcos so he can get his wish: “I want to call Jesus Christ in Bethlehem” before December this year.

Meeting this deadline is urgent especially as the pandemic forces a shift to blended learning modes that are heavily dependent on digital technology, and as Duterte orders a shift to paperless government transactions.

Let’s hope those benefiting from layers and layers of red tape won’t simply shift their redundant systems and procedures to the digital modes of governance.

As for the telcos, they have often said that they have the funds for capacity upgrades, and numerous pending applications for the installation of the necessary infrastructure such as telecommunications towers.

Considering the daunting hurdles, however, they should consider just letting the government make good on its threat to take over telcos services.

Government action or assistance is needed for problems including right-of-way issues, resistance from private homeowners who don’t want telco towers near their backyard, awful red tape at the local government level, and extortion by the communist New People’s Army, whose thugs bomb or torch the facilities of companies that refuse to fork out “revolutionary taxes.”

Maybe the Anti-Terrorism Law will be applied on some of these extortionists. With a provision in the law imposing 10 years of imprisonment for wrongful arrest, however, I don’t think there’s much enthusiasm among law enforcers to apply this law. They would find it less complicated to just carry out Duterte’s campaign promise to kill, kill, kill troublemakers.

Speaking of which… no speech of this President will be complete without fighting words on his flagship program: the war on drugs. Duterte renewed his call for the restoration of capital punishment for drug offenses. There’s a strong buzz in Congress that he will get his wish this time.

* * * Further into the SONA, the presidential fighting words went into reverse as he reiterated the policy of kowtowing to China on the West Philippine Sea. He’s “inutile” against the military might of China, the President of the weak republic declared to the world.

When will this government ever see the arbitral ruling and international support as far more potent weapons in this dispute than military might? Four years of appeasement have not yielded any changes in Beijing’s activities in the South China Sea. Worse, our fishing boats have even been sunk by Chinese ships, and the fishermen are told by our government to just shut up about it. “Inutile” is the perfect word.

Not surprisingly, Beijing is now asking Manila to “join hands” in blocking “external powers” creating disruptions in the South China Sea. No doubt Manila will happily agree.

Appalled folks need not fret; the next general election, like the COVID vaccine, is just “around the corner.”

* * * Now what about fighting COVID-19? The fight with Drilon, the oligarchs and utility companies distracted critics from the long portions of the SONA on confronting what the Department of Health has dubbed “World War C” (for coronavirus).

The critics are looking for the recovery roadmap, to which Malacañang retorted: are you deaf?

Perhaps people were waiting for more detailed plans on mass testing, contact tracing and isolation, including support for domestic development of testing kits, contact tracing apps and, why not, even a cure or vaccine, to speed up the return to normalcy.

Maybe Duterte preferred to leave such issues to his weekly report on the status of the pandemic response. He did acknowledge that “our actions have been far from perfect.”

Considering the time constraints (the SONA was already an interminable one hour and 40 minutes), Duterte couldn’t have gotten into the details of his Bayanihan recovery measure, economic stimulus packages and assistance to both overseas and domestic workers.

At the end of his prepared speech, he called for unity: “The government cannot do this without your help… I appeal to each and every Filipino, let us take care of one another… together, we shall overcome.”

But then he delivered an ad-lib ending, lashing out anew at his pet peeves. Inevitably, what lingered were the fighting words rather than the call to “march in unison.”