I turned a year older today. Although grateful to God that I’m blessed with a caring and supportive family and friends whom I can always count on, I can’t help but reflect on what lies ahead for all of us. Am I—are we—better off now than we were more three years ago?
Many of the issues that drove 16 million Filipinos to choose Rodrigo Duterte in 2016 to occupy the seat of power in Malacañang remain unresolved, and some have even become worse. Those 16 million Filipinos were so riled up with the traffic situation and the previous administration’s perceived apathy to their plight that they picked a strongman who vowed to have their respective backs.
The 2016 political intramurals have simmered down, and those 16 million Filipinos seem to have forgotten what they have been promised. Out of blind loyalty and admiration, they have (figuratively) molded their president into an icon to idolize. Let me just ask some basic questions. Has travel time on Edsa shortened? Do they feel safer and comfortable riding the MRT? Have motorists been issued their respective license plates for the vehicles they bought three years ago? Has Duterte accomplished anything under his “Build, Build, Build” program? The project we see being built and/or inaugurated by this government are carryovers from the previous administration. I don’t even want to dwell on the analytics. I, for one, refuse to be a dot on the Excel spreadsheets of these so-called expert pollsters’ spreadsheets.
Since June 2016, what has Duterte accomplished in his much-vaunted and vicious nationwide war on drugs after he encouraged the police authorities and the public to “go ahead and kill” drug addicts? Local and foreign human-rights advocates condemn the thousands of extrajudicial killings of alleged drug dealers and addicts because many of the cadavers that started piling up on the streets belonged to innocent Filipino bystanders and unverified drug users or pushers, all of them young and marginalized.
The 2019 midterm election proved disastrous for the political opposition. Propped up by a huge government war chest, mind-conditioning poll surveys, religious cult bootlickers and hungry people who are magnetized by the glitter of a dime, Duterte’s senatorial candidates were able to sweep that once-august chamber.
I was hoping against hope that Filipino voters have gone beyond stereotyping. I was wrong. They still went for celebrity or name recognition and the color of the candidate’s money. I’m still not discounting that there could be some manipulation done in the last elections. The Senate used to be the country’s most self-exalted Legislative body. It was governed by people of eloquence, good humor and energy. They possessed the intelligence and diligence to comprehend and familiarize themselves with the provisions of the bills being considered on the floor. It was their drive or instinct which took them to the heart of crucial issues and enabled them to contribute their full share to the making of national policy. They were men and women of integrity, whose moral compass was neither broken nor missing. They abhorred the confines of the narrow-minded concerns of their hometown or region, but instead served the national interest. I could only hope (again, against hope) that the present crop of senators would live by their sacrosanct duty to the country.
But as it is, however, the Senate will be without an opposition. The system of checks and balances, which is crucial to a democracy, has been severely compromised. The lower and upper chamber’s lineup could be conditioning our minds for authoritarian regime. The Senate is the first line of defense against the excesses of the Executive branch. Now, Duterte can do as he wishes: reinstate the death penalty; lower the age of criminal liability from 15 to nine years old; push for Charter change; incarcerate more of his political opponents…all geared to strengthen his already tight grip on power.
Worldwide, authoritarianism has been resurrected as a geopolitical force, with big and nuclear-powered nations, such as China and Russia, advocating anti-liberalism as a substitute to a wobbling liberal dominion. They are reinforcing authoritarian rule worldwide right smack into the very heart of liberal societies to destabilize them from within. Authoritarianism is now as an ideological force, which offers Jurassic appraisal of liberalism, at a time when the liberal world is going through its greatest crisis of confidence since the 1930s. Its comeback accompanies new and inconceivable tools of social control and interference. Duterte was spawned from this political discipline. Only time can tell when he would be wise enough to build a system of espionage to monitor ordinary people, and jail, torture and kill those suspected of provoking dissent. To a smaller degree, the so-called Duterte Death Squad (DDS) has already been quick to the task. Despite his overwhelming popularity according to recent surveys, I find it odd that Duterte feels increasingly insecure, concocting ouster plots adorned by web-like matrices that even the Defense Department was quick to disavow.
I hate to think that Filipinos do not yearn for freedom. When those 16 million elected Duterte, they sought security (“I will kill all the drug addicts and make the streets safe again”). Exasperated in part by the slow grind of justice in a dysfunctional Judiciary, they mistakenly assumed that the rule of law has no particular answer to their needs. Dictators, such as Ferdinand Marcos, Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, Haiti’s Jean-Claude Duvalier, and Paraguay’s Alfredo Stroessner were all thrown out by the Reagan administration when it buried the Kirkpatrick Doctrine of the early 1980s, which supported repressive dictatorships. I see no similar action from Trump who is just too willing to embrace such doctrine.
Philippines, which way are you headed? Have we become numb to the profanities coming out of Duterte’s mouth? Is rape just a topic to be tossed around as a joke? Have we become desensitized to the daily senseless killings that have flooded our streets with blood?
For comments and suggestions, e-mail me at mvala.v@gmail.com