While we Filipinos are now all trying to get used to President Rodrigo Duterte’s habit of swearing in public, a tendency he himself admitted that he could not always control, the international community is, of course, always shocked at this rather unpresidential lack of tact and decorum. Our foreign friends are not obliged to adjust, of course, just as we, as the nation that the President is supposed to serve, need not have to adjust to him.
In fact, if he has the slightest sense of humility left in him, he should make that gesture that he thinks of the nation first more than himself by demonstrating a willingness to respect not just the public’s sensibility but at least some formalities and protocols that go with the territory. After all, as the wartime slogan goes, “Loose lips sink ship.” And that ship could well be the nation that now relies on him as the captain.
Duterte’s foul mouth went global once again after he used expletives against US President Barack Obama in reaction to the latter’s remarks over human rights issues in the Philippine government’s all-out war on illegal drugs. This came shortly before what could have been their first meeting at the Asean Summit held in Laos.
Obama cancelled that meeting and said that while he tries to understand the Philippine President’s peculiar habit of speaking, he hoped that he could have been more cordial in dealing with foreign counterparts as “words matter.” That’s a basic lesson in diplomacy in the broadest sense of the word.
Duterte later expressed “regrets” over his words but went on, days after, to launch another attack on America, this time on the latter’s records of human rights violations in the Philippines. In particular, he cited the massacre of Muslims in Mindanao by American soldiers during the early years of US occupation of our country. While Duterte may be right in revisiting that part of history, it remains evasive of the issue being raised against him: extrajudicial killings and widespread disregard of due process and the rules of engagement in the campaign against drugs.
This recent diatribe against America came just a few weeks after he called the US Ambassador to the Philippines a faggot. As always, Duterte tried to deflect American criticism of extrajudicial killings and his controversial views on human rights by resorting to insults and expletives that rarely go beyond four letter words and cliche phrases.
His tactlessness can be so ridiculously insensitive as when he cursed the Pope and hinted necrophilia in his comments about an Australian woman who had been gang raped and murdered. Those remarks not only raised controversy in the Philippines but shocked the whole world.
Duterte’s apologists are quick to defend him saying it’s just his penchant for hyperbole, an inclination they attribute rather condescendingly to his being a Bisaya. Duterte always argues that he was just being himself, having been raised in the gutters, a myth, of course, that he loves to create for himself. Being sometimes tactless or having a tendency to swear is just part of his nature, he always says, and that we have to take it or leave it.
And yet, his overcautious attitude and manner of speaking in dealing with China contradicts this claims of avoiding hypocrisy by speaking without restraint. Same goes with his cordiality and friendliness with the Marcoses, whose feelings he is careful not to offend. This exposes his pretensions and selectiveness, his parochialism and childish vindictiveness.
In his essay “The Art of the Insult,” Cebuano writer Resil Mojares says that “the exchange of insult is an art which requires not merely gall and daring but things like skill, style, and timing.” He advises that the one who insults should not take himself too seriously. “If you do, you are more likely to appear ill-humored and mean spirited. Remember there is a whole lot of difference between the art of the insult and vicious character assassination. A measure of grace and levity is important. A mean, grim, and graceless insult diminishes the person who speaks it instead of the person for whom it is intended.”
In other words, if you have to insult somebody, be sure that you don’t end up being the butt of the joke. And unfortunately, if a president makes such mistake in what is supposedly a formal gathering of the diplomatic community, the joke is not just on him but on us, the nation that he represents.