After Robin Padilla revealed on the second day of his Mocha-Uson-worthy performance at the Senate parking lot that in fact coup d’etat was in the air because it was the reason why “he” wanted to see Trillanes arrested, so many days after, the President himself confirms the same — in so many words, in his signature confused rhetoric and garbled messaging. Asked about his revocation of Trillanes’ amnesty and whether there was a need to do a loyalty check on the military since Trillanes is a military man, Duterte got to this point after a page of transcribed answers:

But itong mga intriga na kudeta-kudeta, look, I am here to enforce the law. ‘Yung kay Trillanes, alam mo ang totoo niyan ang nag-research, si Calida, just like kay Sereno. He was the one who was…

Uh, no, Mr. President, no one asked you about a coup d’etat. But we get that it’s in your head. If we are to be optimistic, it means there is in fact the possibility of pushback from the military. If I am going to be optimistic, a nationalist military that will stand with the people against you, because: killings and wars, flouting our laws, installation of your own elite and oligarchs, the lack of transparency and accountability, inflation and the manufactured crisis of imported rice and galunggong.

If we are going to be prudent: then at the very least this reveals that Duterte is quaking in his boots, imagining that coup d’etats are a possibility, and uncertain about whether it was a good move to target Trillanes with the revocation of his amnesty. And yes, targeting Trillanes is something Duterte himself admits doing, and I quote: “Bakit tinarget (target) ko siya? Well, I only have one word. <…> I will just quote, correct me if I’m wrong, ‘Do not do unto others, what you would not want them to do to you.'”

Other than yet another Presidential slip — he tries to take back that “target” line when a reporter followed it up — what is interesting in this speech is what Duterte imagines is happening. He says, again in his muddled  disorganized way, that there are three sectors moving to oust him in October. Here, an edited version (imagine how much more confusing the complete one is):

Tatlong ‘yan, bantayan ninyo. Iyang Yellow, Liberals; Trillanes; pati ang politburo. They have a… We will show it to you. Kaya kayong mga sundalo before you jump into the conclusion about — tanungin ninyo intelligence ninyo and they will show you. <…> Ganun ‘yan eh. Kung ako, ‘pag nakausap ko ang Yellow, ito lang ibigay ko sa iyo. ‘Pag nakausap ko si Trillanes, he’s collaborating, sleeping with the enemy, meron ring another narrative sila dito. Now hindi nila alam, sinabi ko na nga doon, sabi ko, “it’s being supplied by a foreign power, hindi dito” <…> So tatlo ‘yan, they are praying for my ouster. <…> Bantayan ninyo ‘yan kay ‘yang tatlo na ‘yan konektado lahat ‘yan. Ang problema sa —  itong kay Trillanes is, he is also playing with the Communist Party of the Philippines. Pero alam ko na noon pa gusto nila ring pumasok sa PMA na may mga kadete na hinihila nila para — ‘yung mga Left. And always it is poverty —  eh bakit siya malaki ang bahay niya, bakit iyo nipa hut lang? Style na bugok.

So based on Duterte’s intelligence, which he says he can’t make public as it will be “detrimental” because it will prove where they are getting it (you mean, Russia? China?), the Liberal Party (LP), Trillanes, and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) are working together to oust him in October. He says Trillanes is the middle man who is playing both sides, but that the CPP is also infiltrating the military because of envy: the NPA cadres are  comparing the huts they live in to the houses of the military.

Say what? The President is being fed some bad bad fiction, and he’s repeating it publicly like it’s truth.

To begin with, the LP and CPP working together is an absolute impossibility. Any person who knows of the ideological difference would know this to be true. Trillanes playing both sides is the same: has Duterte no sense of how this man has stood against communists since time immemorial? And what of the NPA cadres being jealous of the military’s homes? How little does Duterte think of these cadres? The ideological backbone of these revolutionaries would put any of us to shame, I’m pretty sure envy is not a trait that’s entertained.

But here’s what one also realizes of Duterte after two years: he likes to weave the fiction of a great opposition, the fiction of crises, the fiction of instability whenever it is proven that it is government itself that is to blame for the state of affairs, be it about the drug war, the war in Marawi, the waste of public funds, inflation, and now the corruption in government (thank you PCIJ!).

It’s not just a matter of distraction: it’s also a matter of creating such instability that it will justify even more authoritarian moves, even more actions that deliberately disregard the law.  Case in point: in the midst of talking about the purported oust Duterte moves of his three enemies, he reveals that a coup d’etat will mean the military fighting with the police.

<…> Pero if the military and the police — I will not… Patayin ang sundalo, patayin ang sundalo. Puro ko sundalo kasi ako ang Commander–in-Chief and history would judge me as tangina gagong ‘to, sa panahon niya pina-away niya ‘yung mga sundalo niya pati pulis nagbabarilan.

But why would a coup d’etat mean soldiers and policemen shooting at each other? Why would an uprising be about that at all? An uprising against Duterte would mean soldiers and policemen standing with the people, who have had enough of an authoritarian President, who has killed and waged wars, who has put us in this dire economic crisis, who operates like a feudal lord giving gifts to his loyal lackeys, who has put his own oligarchs and elite in positions of power, allowing them free reign over projects in the billions.

Ah, but that’s the thing: Duterte forgets the people here. He forgets that WE, THE PEOPLE, are watching all of this unfold, we are suffering the burden of inflation, of privatization, of the lack of transparency and accountability. WE are the ones who know that Duterte’s government is to blame for the state of the nation — not the LP, not the CPP, not Trump or the US. WE know better than to believe the fictions Duterte and his government weave.

Duterte forgets that we the people know of revolutions where no shots need to be fired at all. Unless of course HE orders it — and we all know he’s entirely capable of that. But then again, we the people, know of the power of numbers. We know of the possibility of a military and police who will side with us, because we are in the right, because they themselves suffer the repercussions of having an incompetent, petty, violent man as President.

He ends by warning against a coup d’etat or uprising — or whatever it is that he fear will happen when the people finally gather to oust him:

Kudeta, kudeta, wala ‘yan. It does not — it does not even the word appeal to me at all. Kung idealist ka man o de prinsipyo ka na tao. <…> Sabi nga nung isa, which I really appreciate it — it was not here but somebody, he was giving an advice, “You know a nation can only grow by evolution, dahan-dahan lang”. Putukin mo itong Pilipinas ngayon, gusto mong guluhin, dive tayo lahat.

Good news, Mr President: a people’s uprising against you will not be “panggugulo” at all, and it will not be a dive into darkness, or a free fall. It will be, for all intents and purposes, an upward swing, a populace seeing the light, and all those enemies you have in your head will just have to come together with the rest of us who are individual citizens, just going about our daily lives until you came along and required of us — demanded of us — to move for justice and democracy and freedom.

And I do mean moving for your ouster. ***

Note: All quotes are from Duterte’s conversation with media upon his arrival from overseas, September 8 2018.