No outrage from Duterte’s loyal base

The Manila Times

For some Filipinos, President Rodrigo Duterte can do no wrong—even when he admits to a disgusting crime, said Antonio Contreras. Duterte recently boasted, in one of his rambling speeches, that when he was 13 years old he crept into the room of his family’s housemaid and groped her as she slept. He said that he confessed at the time to a priest and was told to recite five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys. Immediately, the same people who erupted in rage at the recent case of a teenage boy who bullied his classmates—people who demanded that the boy be tried as an adult—fell over themselves to make excuses for the president. “The ra-

tionalizations and justifications poured” like rain. Apologists insisted that Duterte was just exposing the uselessness of a Catholic Church that doles out rote penance instead of moral counsel. But they miss the point. Normal teenage boys may fantasize about the maid, but they don’t attack her. Duterte’s filthy act “deserves our collective condemnation, regardless of our politics.” This “political schizophrenia” that allows followers to rationalize what they would normally condemn is poisoning the Filipino character. We will lose respect for the office, “and for ourselves,” if we can’t “keep our moral bearings” under this immoral president.