By Jamil maidan.
We shed tears when we are gripped by thoughts and feelings for which we have no words. That is precisely what Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte did the morning after it became clear that he had won the presidency of the Republic of the Philippines.
At 3:00 a.m., he went to the graves of his parents in Davao City’s oldest cemetery and there, with clenched fists, he wept his heart out and begged them for help and guidance.
This is the real Duterte. Not the maverick who goes by such nicknames as “Dirty Harry” and “the Punisher,” who brags about his Viagra-driven romantic conquests, makes a sleazy joke about a missionary who has been gang-raped and murdered, flings an unprintable expletive at the Pope, promotes the hype that he has killed hundreds of criminals and swears to kill so many more that their corpses will fatten the fish in Manila Bay.
This is not the showboat who would test China’s pugnacity in the South China Sea by riding a jet ski to a disputed island to plant the Philippine flag there, daring the Chinese to shoot him dead and make him a national hero. And not the perpetual juvenile brimming with self-assurance who says outrageous things to make himself more interesting than he already is.
That is not the real Duterte. That is only the public persona.
Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte had been mayor of Davao City, one of the world’s largest cities, for seven terms when he won the 2016 Philippine presidential election by a landslide. At the moment of his greatest triumph you would expect to witness more of his braggadocio but no, instead you are treated to an epiphany: he is human after all.
It must have been an overwhelming moment when he realized his human limitations in the face of the awesome challenges of a Philippine presidency. So he sought help where help was sure to come without strings attached: from beyond the grave where his departed parents are presumably still watching over him. That is the real Digong.
Because he was extremely adventurous in his youth, his parents were hard-pressed to discipline him. For instance, he had been flying a small plane without his parents knowing it. During one flight, he dumped a rock on the roof of the building where he attended high school, an act of mischief for which he later apologized to the school authorities. Due to capers like that, he was branded the family black sheep at a time when ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) was not yet discovered as a common affliction of those who would otherwise be deemed brilliant.
The black sheep turned out to be an accomplished public servant. As mayor he is credited for turning Davao from a hub for homicide to one of the safest and coziest cities in the world. He cracks down on criminals in draconian ways that infuriate human rights advocates: it is even bruited that he has organized death squads, whose sole business is to polish off known drug dealers and other criminals.
These shadowy operators are reminiscent of Indonesia’s Petrus (penembak misterius) that knocked off with impunity hundreds of preman (thugs) during the Suharto era. Eventually Suharto himself claimed responsibility — credit, actually — for Petrus. Similarly, the buzz about the Davao death squads has not diminished Digong Duterte’s popularity and may have added to it. Nobody has managed, however, to prove that he was responsible for any extrajudicial killings.
Filipinos better pray there will be no attempts to extrapolate the death-squad gambit to the national level. At that level, it will boomerang. What Duterte can feasibly do is to keep his campaign promise to straighten out the national police and crack down on corruption in the military. Expect him also to deliver social justice to underpaid teachers, cops and enlisted men.
His vow to devolve more powers and resources to provincial governments is immediately doable and popular. Transforming the country from a unitary to a federal system through constitutional amendments demands a lot more time and careful study but it can be done within Duterte’s tenure.
He has not talked about it but he should institute reforms in national budget planning and execution — to prevent the rise of another corruption icon such as Janet Napoles. And if he is serious about eliminating corruption, he can take a page from the Indonesian example, set up a Philippine version of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), and then guard against reactionary moves to defang it.
Foreign policy may not be his strong point but the Philippines has a trove of diplomats who can do a great job if the government supports them. In spite of his boast that he will ride a jet ski to the Spratleys and plant the Philippine flag on a disputed island, he will not do any such stunt. He is not dumb. Nor is he dumb enough to send to China a foreign-policy ignoramus such as Senator Trillanes to play at backdoor diplomacy.
His recent call for a multilateral roundtable summit to address the South China Sea crisis is a perfectly rational move. The challenge will be in how to get China to participate. Wish him luck on that.
He is often compared to the American mogul Donald Trump, now the Republican presumptive presidential nominee. The comparison is unfair to Duterte and the Philippine electorate.
Trump’s insults to political opponents are tame compared to the filth of Duterte’s profanity. But unlike Duterte, Trump does not have a sliver of a record in elected office or public service. And he is a total palooka on policy.
In winning the Republican nomination, Trump has already divided and embarrassed the American people. In contrast, by electing Duterte to the highest position within their gift, the Filipino people made a good and intelligent bet.
A good bet, however, is not necessarily a sure bet. Duterte has six years to prove that the Filipinos did not blunder when they elected him to the presidency by a huge margin. As to his brag that he can solve the problems of crime and corruption in a period of between three to six months after he assumes office, I do not think even he believes that.
He knows how tough the challenges are before him. Just one of them, the kidnappings that have become an industry in southwestern Mindanao will keep him awake nights. That’s why he hied down to the graves of his parents in the wee hours of the morning to cry for help.
