As the third year of President Rodrigo Duterte’s term begins, it has become clear that the positive change he promised for the Philippines has fallen hostage to his unwillingness to alter key aspects of his leadership.
Political analysts who will be busy gauging the President’s performance over the last two years would be wanting in their work if they do not note in the coming days his failure in one crucial area: that of building unity among his constituents.
One may always argue that his continually high approval ratings show that Filipinos are squarely behind Duterte.
Nevertheless, the President’s popularity does not stand on solid ground.
It feeds on fear and on people’s tendency to exclude and ostracize those who are different.
Survey after survey has shown that while Filipinos welcome the campaign against illegal drugs, the President’s centerpiece platform, they do not approve of the bloodshed associated with it and fear the prospect of becoming part of its death toll of innocents and mere suspects.
Given the public pulse, one needs no doctoral degree to infer what goes hand-in-hand with the said fear apart from support in principle of the anti-drug crackdown: acquiescence.
Filipinos would rather shut their mouths instead of being labeled an opponent to the self-styled terror of drug lords, a label that would easily make any of them a proverbial marked man.
This is where Duterte has unfortunately succeeded.
He has succeeded in fracturing many of us from one another and he has a rabid army of disinformation practitioners to ensure his success.
They echo his disdain for peoples of faith, many of whom believe that even the most hardened criminal should never be deprived of another crack at redemption.
They amplify his gross disrespect for advocates of human rights, who bank on the capability, when educated, of every man and woman to recognize and protect what is due his or her neighbor instead of leaving policemen and soldiers to strong-arm the nation to discipline.
They have caught the disease that is his condescension and caprice to persons of differing political persuasions so that even the diplomatic among leftists, who validly argue for job security and just land reform are shouted down as disturbers of the peace.
They have become as wishy-washy, nay, frail as he is in standing up for Philippine territorial integrity so that even the circumspect in the right wing are dismissed as persons eager for a putsch and stupid in protesting Chinese trespasses in the West Philippine Sea.
Let this be a stern warning.
The President does not preside over a united nation.
He is seriously sealing a historical reputation of being a ringleader happy to have let a mob pounce on people who in fact have ideas to supplement his own sorely limited ideas about how we may attain progress.
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