Halfway through the week and the Duterte government, in seemingly separate and distinct instances, has revealed how what it has normalized — what it has strengthened — in the past two years is a form of leadership that fears criticism and rages against accountability. It’s easy to think that this is just about the drug war, and how Duterte has tried consistently, and unsuccessfully, to evade accountability, by either (1) saying that it is not illegal for a President to say “I will kill you!” or (2) discrediting and / or removing from position anyone at all who stands against the war on drugs.

But this attitude has seeped into the ways in which other branches of government work, how these agencies are run, given leaders who are taking from Duterte’s school of (non-)governance, which seeks nothing less than a citizenry that will kow-tow to a leader’s whims, no matter how wrong or violent, unfair or unjust. At the heart of it are leaders that cannot handle criticism and do not know how to even respond properly and accordingly. That it cuts across Duterte’s sacred cows is no surprise: Wanda Teo’s Department of Tourism, Liza Diño’s Film Development Council of the Philippines, the Bureau of Immigration and the military. 

Because why else would a fact-finding mission scare the hell out of the military? So much so that a group of individuals from various groups — human rights advocates all — would be “welcomed” in different parts of Mindanao with multiple checkpoints and tarpaulins that read: “Welcome to the fact-finding mission! JUST GET IT RIGHT.”

Get what right, exactly, one wonders. This was a group whose task it was to gather facts from the ground about the plight of our farmers. This was about understanding better what’s actually happening in the countryside, the hard-to-reach places that are always spoken for by “representative” government officials, but are rarely actually spoken to, asked about, the state of their lives and the struggles they face.

Getting it right would mean getting the stories of these farmers and peasants straight from them, without the mediation and spin of government and biased mainstream media — biased of course for private interests, which is also what runs our media industry.

The arrest of Sr. Patricia Fox was the conclusion to this kind of treatment that the fact-finding mission received. Today, the President admitted he had ordered her arrest for disorderly conduct — even as we have not heard Sr. Pat speak against this government, and even when she is on a missionary visa to do the work she’s been doing the past 27 years in the Philippines.

It doesn’t help Duterte’s cause that the reason behind Sr. Pat’s arrest was amorphous at best: first the BI said she was detained “for joining rallies,” and then at the BI, according to region co-leader Sr Mary Barbuto of the Lady of Sion congregation, Sr. Pat was “shown pictures of herself joining rallies and present in fact-finding and mercy missions among the indigenous and plundered ecological environment.”

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that foreigners are not allowed to join rallies under the law. But what if it’s not a rally against something, but for something? What if Sr. Pat — or any foreigner for that matter — is at a protest in support of human rights and indigenous people’s? Why would that be a problem at all? Does the President think that if we support human rights, if we stand with the Lumad’s struggle against big business and capitalists that are landgrabbing their ancestral lands, that we are standing against government?

But isn’t government on the side of human rights? Isn’t Duterte against oppressive big business? Isn’t Duterte in fact, pro-people? That would he is on the same side as Sr. Pat. That he is with her in supporting the rights of the people.

The way the President is acting, what he’s saying is that protests in favor of human rights and IPs are against him. What he is revealing is that he takes offense at people (foreigners and citizens) who take a stand for basic rights, because he feels that this is a criticism of him and his government. This would be consistent with the fact that he is the same President who has since jailed a Senator critical of his drug war, and has pushed for the impeachment of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for the same reason. This would be consistent with the fact that he has appointed into his comms team ill-equipped and unprofessional propagandists, who do nothing but wage war against criticism, calling critics names, threatening them with violence, and insisting that everyone is just paid for by “the opposition” — an entity that they can’t for the life of them even define.

This is Duterte, who said today in so many words that “criticism is a threat to our sovereignty.” He meant criticism from foreigners — but you know he’s threatening the rest of us.

Lest it is not clear: there is nothing wrong with what Sr. Pat has been doing in this country the past 27 years. There is something fundamentally wrong with a President who thinks that every act that is in support of basic human rights, is an act against him.

What is it that Duterte keeps saying? If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. In the same breath: if this President is so scared of what a 71-year-old missionary might find out about his government … then what is this government hiding? ***