"To the brink" was also published by The Manila Times on 7 February 2024.
Former
president Rodrigo Duterte has a reputation of being a strong man and a strong
mouth, although no one could tell which one preceded the other.
At a
“prayer” rally in Davao held on 28 January 2024, he was at his usual blabbering
self as he denounced attempts to change the constitution through people’s
initiative.
He addressed the troublemakers and prepped a junta-like
takeover by the military:
“Wala kayong prinsipyo, mukhang pera kayong lahat. 'Yan ang
totoo. Kaya ang gusto ko pag nagka-letse-letse na, pumasok ang military…palitan
ninyo lahat, arestuhin ninyo kasi nagsasayang ng pera at yung ginagastos nila
is a fraud. Swindling ang ginawa nila. You must account for the wasted money or
the money that you bought the signature of the Filipino…bribery."
Reminiscent of his calling Richard Gordon being “a fart away
from disaster,” he asked: “Bakit pumasok sa utak ninyo 'yang people’s
initiative? Anong nakain ninyo? There’s nothing wrong with the Constitution
right now." He charged that the true agenda of people behind the people’s
initiative was to perpetuate themselves in power.
In his
diatribe against Gordon, who was a sitting senator at the time and had
criticized him for the series of appointments of retired military officials to
key civilian positions in government, Duterte was referencing brain cells that
dripped towards the visceral parts, ready to bomb out as the dreaded smelly
air. Gordon also chaired the Senate committee that probed anomalies in the
procurement of COVID 19 supplies involving Pharmally Corporation, eventually
drafting a report that recommended the filing of plunder charges against
Duterte, among others, as soon as he stepped out of office.
In keeping
with the grain of the metaphor, the two separate public rallies two Sundays ago
had the flair of two camps trying to out-fart each other. Another serving of
that kind could well drive either of them to the brink of aborting a partisan
union, if a divorce has not yet happened, flirting disaster for a political
marriage that has been arranged for convenience in the first place.
One wonders
why these show of forces—one organized by Malacañang in Manila and the other by
a Malacañang-like overlord in Davao—needed to be mounted on the same day when
both camps had at least 700 days left in the calendar to square off for the
next mid-term elections. The inuendo is that neither event was a prayer rally
nor a kick-off blast, but one to sieve which of the freeloading minions were
friend or foe. The likes of Gloria Arroyo and other prominent politicians that
joined Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr.
in the Manila rally have been known to aim for the best of both worlds,
but the required logistics kept them from wielding the perfect art and the
practice of traditional politics.
The
opposition to charter change is best left at the hands of anyone other than
Duterte. While in power, he tried but failed to revise the constitution. In
2019 media interview, he called the 1987 Constitution provision on the
country’s exclusive economic zone “senseless and thoughtless,” further defaming
it as a piece of “toilet paper.”
The use of
what his spokesperson described as yet another metaphor came out in the context
of a 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) ruling that “China’s
claim—including its nine-dash line, recent land reclamation activities, and
other activities in Philippine waters—were unlawful.” China trashed the ruling
and, consistent with its snub of the proceedings that led to the decision, did
not recognize PCA’s jurisdiction on the issue, a position that China has since
defended by taking bullying and aggressive actions to the detriment of the
Philippine government’s exercise of sovereignty.
The treacherous bent of the man showed throughout the whole
time he represented the country. But no one in Congress dared to impeach him,
probably out of fear from losing either physical or financial wellbeing, or
both.
Two days
after his expletive-littered rant, he called for the secession of Mindanao from
a sovereign country whose constitution provides that its territorial integrity
is inviolable.
When he was president, he bombed Marawi City to its ground
to kill rebels who espoused the same cause. What makes Duterte and the Maute
group different is that the latter employed arms to achieve their ends,
although he reportedly got licenses for more than 300 firearms two weeks before
he stepped down from office.
Duterte warned that President Marcos, Jr. risked being
ousted from power unless the latter stopped the charter change drive, perhaps
suggesting that public opposition to it constitutes the magnitude of the 1986
people power revolution that toppled the government of his father, the late
Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. Despite the obscene manner by which the people’s
initiative has been undertaken, I would think that the warning seems
presumptuous at this point. The Joseph Estrada parallel is closer to this
case—he who fell from power on account of greed and betrayal among
friends.
I would also attribute to friendship as the force that
allowed the burial of the late president Marcos, Sr. at the Libingan ng Bayani,
as well as the dodging from jail time for convicts like his wife Imelda Marcos
and those charged for plunder like Jinggoy Estrada, Juan Ponce Enrile, Gloria
Arroyo, among others.
The charge that Bongbong Marcos Jr. is a drug addict,
debunked promptly by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), was
probably meant to mount a compelling call to action.
Duterte knows if he has been lying all his life, otherwise
he discriminates if his drug war killed thousands of drug suspects while the
one he believes is a user beyond doubt lives another day to in fact rose to
succeed him. In the end, whether he or PDEA is a liar is of lesser consequence
than the troubled mind his blabbering strong mouth has exposed.
President Marcos rebrands his administration
A few
months after President Bongbong Marcos assumed office, he issued an Executive
Order and a Memorandum Circular launching the “Bagong Pilipinas Campaign as the
Administration's Brand of Governance and Leadership.” Dated 3 July 2023, the
Circular defines Bagong Pilipinas as “the overarching theme of the
administration’s brand of governance and leadership, which calls for deep and
fundamental transformations in all sectors of society and government and
fosters the State’s commitment towards the attainment of comprehensive policy
reforms and full economic recovery.” The directive also calls for all national
government agencies to use communication tools with the “Bagong Pilipinas”
logo.
The punch
line of a well-received State of the Nation Address he delivered before
Congress on the same month proclaimed that the “Bagong Pilipinas has
arrived”.
Amusing how
the organizers of the event at the Luneta on 28 January 2023 could call it
“kick-off rally” when Malacañang has already kicked around much of the
pre-selling. It was a show meant to entertain a crowd. However, instead of
charging fees for those who wished to be entertained by it, some were paid just
to make themselves available to become part of the audience. They even lured
the destitute which, in another place, should be a win for humanity. Prior to
the event, the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) announced that the
Department of Social Welfare and Development would distribute cash to
beneficiaries of its Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situations program.
Reports
said that by the time President Bongbong Marcos stood up to deliver his speech
(serving as the highlight of the event, everything else were mounted to lead
eyes and ears to it), crowd estimates ranged from 200,000 to 450,000. Among
other things, he told the crowd that ‘sa Bagong Pilipinas, bawal ang waldas’
(in English, wasteful spending is not allowed in New Philippines, or something
to that effect) in a show that cost the taxpayers at least Php29 million,
according to PCO records. Of these expenses, Php5.3 went for “Entertainment
Services”. It will probably take an eternity for the Commission on Audit months
to count the total cost spent for per diems given to government employees who
were required join the rally as these kinds of expenses are normally not
reported as such.
What
marketing for the new brand does is present an improvement offer, which forces
people to admit past failures. The future of Bagong Pilipinas struggles to
glimmer against the backdrop not only of a predecessor’s rule who envisioned a
“Bagong Lipunan” (New Society), but also by the profile of a profligate, lying,
and allegedly thieving younger version of the successor.
Reconciling
the fresh rebrand with the mascot’s record is a challenging task. Marcos Jr.
has been known for his profligate spending while attending college abroad, also
at the taxpayers’ expense of course, which included support for a party-going
lifestyle, watching Formula 1 races and rock band concerts, an addiction that
he indulges in up to this day. Just recently, he watched an out-of-town concert
using a publicly funded chopper for transport.
He claimed
to have earned a bachelor’s degree at Oxford University in London, only to balk
when the school debunked the accuracy of the claim.
Citing a
Supreme Court decision, a former commissioner of the now-moribund Presidential
Commission on Good Government (PCGG) said during the 2022 electoral campaign
period that then presidential candidate Bongbong Marcos was responsible for
“hiding the wealth his family unlawfully acquired during the administration of
his late father.” A 2003 Supreme Court ruling established the "undeniable
circumstances" and an "avalanche" of documentary evidence
against the Marcoses who, the same ruling said, “failed to prove they lawfully
acquired $658 million plus interest deposited in Swiss bank accounts.”
An article
featured in the University of the Philippines’ Kasarinlan: Philippine
Journal of Third World Studies published photocopies of Swiss Credit Bank
documents that showed his parents (Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and Imelda Marcos) had
signed with fictitious names as William Saunders and Jane Ryan, respectively.
An account with Citibank in New York in the name of Fernanda Vazquez has also
been suspected of being owned by Imelda.
The PCGG
estimated that the Marcos family's ill-gotten wealth amounted to billions of US
dollars, from a low of 5 billion to a high of 10 billion. The government has
reportedly recovered a total of Php170 billion (or around 3 billion dollars in
today’s exchange rate) of the stained money since 1986.
When the
late Ferdinand Marcos Sr. became president in 1965, the Philippines and South
Korea have almost identical Gross Domestic Product per capita incomes. Since
then and up to the point of his outer in 1986, World Bank data in current US
dollar shows that South Korea’s per capita annual income had risen to $ 2,800,
while that of the Philippines wallowed at $600. The average in the rural areas
was even worse, hovering at about $100. (For context though: the widening gap
between the two countries accelerated even after the Marcos Sr. years,
suggesting that Marcos was not entirely the problem.) Equally noteworthy were
his outputs in putting up infrastructures, although mostly funded by
scandal-marred foreign borrowings) which continue to provide public benefits up
to this day.
Governments
at all levels, regardless of who the president is, have never been corrupt
free, yet even dirty money may find its way back into the hands of honest
labor, helping stimulate economic activity in poor communities. What
distinguished corruption during the Marcos Sr. era was that his cronies brought
their loot out of the country at the first sign of incoming turbulent weather,
perhaps typified by the Dewey Dee caper in 1981. Reportedly fronting Marcos
Sr., Dee left the country with millions of unpaid debts, igniting a bank run
that further stomped the economy already wobbly under the weight of kleptocracy
and overall public distrust in his administration. Inflation rate in 1984
leveled at 50 percent, and as what pollster Mahar Mangahas described as a rare
mood meter reading, the pessimists (30 percent) outnumbered the optimists (26
percent).
And yet
recovering the stolen money was not the biggest issue then, contrary to what
many cash-strapped Filipinos would want history to be written; it may not still
be even now. While much of the hidden wealth issue remains unresolved and the
stealing of public funds remains rampant up to this day, it is the murder of
people that hurts the soul of the nation. The wounds inflicted by
state-sanctioned summary killings are beyond healing; the psyche that drives
the killings today are likely to be farts (to use a Rodrigo Duterte metaphor)
of a residual anger generated by armed conflicts that happened during the dark
days of martial law. We have seen enough to know that summary killings and
other quick fixes of law enforcement that oversteps due process create more
problems than what they intend to address.
The present
administration has so much work to do to address the failures of the past,
particularly in the protection and promotion of human rights. Facing up to the
same broadside of mass murder that blighted the Duterte administration will
determine if Bagong Pilipinas is true to its meaning or, like the kick-off
rally, it is all for show.