It’s easy to dismiss the Duterte decision to revoke the amnesty that Senator Antonio Trillanes was given (along with 299 others) by President Noynoy Aquino in 2010, as just another way for the government to silence a critic. After all, this is consistent with what Duterte has done the past two years: from Senator Leila de Lima to former CJ Lourdes Sereno, from Teddy Casiño, Liza Maza, Ka Paeng Mariano, and Ka Satur Ocampo to Sr. Patricia Fox. This is the way Duterte has moved against his perceived “enemies,” who are so quickly transformed as he and his followers see fit, into “enemies of the state” for being critical of his policies, for questioning the wars he wages, for pushing back against his anti-people policies.

It has been a successful strategy for them so far. A government that operates on shock is able to keep the populace frazzled and distracted and always preoccupied. The smaller shocks are those soundbites (drop a rape joke here) and the moves that flout the law (order the police to kill or illegally detain citizens here) or dismiss questions about government’s accountability (insert economic managers defending TRAIN here). When those are not enough, have your team create a show of idiocy (insert Mocha here), which can easily be dismissed as government enemies just nitpicking on Duterte and his people (insert anti-elite and anti-Dilawan statements here). 

The bigger shocks are of course the systemic ones: a tax reform law that is taxing the poor and middle class to oblivion, a questionable infrastructure program in the billions that buries us deeper into debt while making traffic even more unbearable than it already is, the highest inflation rate in nine years, two wars that have killed thousands and pulverized a city, the militarization of farmers’ and indigenous people’s lands for big business, a food crisis, a lack of transparency and accountability, an economic crisis.

There is no awe to be had with these shocks. If at all, these render us silent: half the time because we cannot keep up with what’s going on, the other half because we’re just exhausted. This, Duterte’s government counts on, because a tired populace trying to keep its head above water will have no energy for anything else. 

On the upside: knowing that these shocks are deliberate, no ifs and buts, should be reason enough to recalculate our moves. How do we actively respond? How do we get the upper hand? 

I’ve found solace in reading, in taking time, in asking questions. Why is this person speaking and towards what end, why is this issue surfacing and not something else? 

Take Robin Padilla. While he is an avowed Duterte supporter, it’s been interesting to me his “coming out” to speak against Trillanes, because off-hand, it seems unnecessary – not to mention embarrassing. Because what Robin has come out as is this: he is of the now familiar mold of the rabid, thoughtless, disrespectful Duterte follower, who uses notions of responsibility and accountability against government critics, but never against Duterte himself. This double-standard, this blindness, is an absolute surprise if one were to believe Robin’s old declarations about being a “revolutionary” who idolizes Andres Bonifacio.

At this point, his idolatry of Duterte, with thousands dead and a nation suffering, reveals him to be nothing more than a fanatic. 

As I said: embarrassing. But also quite interesting. Because it was most convenient (if not calculated) for him to take on the role that the Duterte government’s best actors and attention hogs usually play. With Bong Go, Sara Duterte, Mocha Uson away on a junket in Israel, who to step-up, who would get the same mileage, the same amount of attention?

Robin did. Doing a performance that for all intents and purposes was just foolish: on September 4 he sat inside his car parked outside the Senate, screaming from in there that Trillanes should step out and surrender. He was shouting from inside his car, when the only people who could hear him were his Facebook followers – because in perfect Mocha fashion, he was on FB live. And like his idol Duterte, he was throwing some macho shit into the mix, saying Trillanes should stop hiding “under the skirt of the Senate” and “atapang atao, atago sa Senado.”

And just like all of Duterte’s propagandists, Robin mouthed lies. For one thing he called himself an ordinary citizen: “Kami mga ordinaryong tao, kapag may kaso, wala kaming magawa. Kapag sinabi ng pulis na kailangan namin sumama sa kanila, sumasama kami.” 

FACT: Ordinary citizens under Duterte do not get cases filed against them. Citizens suspected of crimes have been killed based on the President’s kill rhetoric. Police do not ask citizens to go with them; police illegally detain citizens. Many citizens who resist warrantless arrests turn up dead anyway. 

Also, Robin said pertaining to Trillanes: “Dito po sa loob ay nagtatago ang isang senador na mismong hindi ho sumusunod sa batas.”

FACT: Trillanes was already granted amnesty in 2010 in Proclamation No. 75. The House of Representatives and the Senate adopted a Concurrent Resolution on the Proclamation in December of that same year. It is ironic that Padilla, who was given executive pardon by Duterte, would be the first to cast this stone against someone who was granted amnesty. Ah, but irony is not something Duterte supporters understand. 

But my favorite of Robin’s two-day performance at the Senate, other than declaring that he could do a citizen arrest against Trillanes – after all Duterte encourages that we all do citizen arrests, never mind due process and arrest warrants – is this moment on day two, when he was asked by a reporter what his purpose was for being in the Senate. Robin said:

Alam mo mula pa pare nung kinudeta ni Emilio Aguinaldo si Andres Bonifacio, wala pang na-prosecute pare, baka ngayon lang. Ito lang ito. Kasi naging kultura na pare ang kudeta. Ako naliligayahan ako at magkakaroon na ng linaw ang lahat ng nangyari sa bansang Pilipinas. Ano ba ‘yon tol. Kapag binalikan mo ang kasaysayan natin puro tayo agawan ng kapangyarihan, puro tayo kudeta. Ito ngayon, naglabas ang military ng rebyu ng kanyang amnesty, e di tingnan natin.

Hmmmm. One, Robin’s spreading falsity by asserting that coup d’etats are what our history’s made of – he must be taking from the same factbook of lies that Duterte uses. Unless of course he’s talking about people’s revolts and resistance movements as forms of coup d’etats? Because our history is riddled with people resisting against oppressive leaderships, from colonizers to presidents, just like Duterte.

Two, as the de facto Mocha, Robin is revealing what it is that concerns this Duterte government. 

Because no one has mentioned this revocation of Trillanes’s amnesty to be about coup d’etats at all. We’ve used words like siege and takeover for what Trillanes had done in the past, but no one other than Robin has used that word, coup d’etat. And he specifically used it in a bad light, in the sense of the coup d’etat being the bane of our existence as nation, and how it is the crime Trillanes has committed.

What this tells us is that this might not just be about silencing Trillanes as critic. This might be about quelling whatever possibility of coup d’etats there is from the ranks of the military and government, a way to point out that dissent from within will not be tolerated. If this is the fear, then that tells us that our number is growing, and it is growing even within government and the military. An exciting proposition. 

And if Robin also equated coup d’etats with people’s revolts and revolutions and resistance movements across our history, then this would just be consistent with Duterte’s fears of being taken down by the people. That part is no surprise. But knowing that coup d’etats, in whatever configuration, is on the mind of Duterte and his men, is telling: they know they are doing us all in, and they know we are absolutely capable of dropping everything and taking to the streets. 

Beyond the spin and noise and social media mileage, populists always reveal their strategies, and make their fears known. It’s up to us to capitalize on it, to move relative to, and beyond, it.

As for Robin Padilla: he should stop invoking the name of Andres Bonifacio. He should also stop calling himself a revolutionary. The real revolutionaries are fighting for people’s rights and against the oppressive and violent government that Duterte has built. Bonifacio would approve.