Tag Archives: Duterte

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Giving Duterte his multiple exits #EndGame

It seems obvious enough that there’s a mad scramble to try and control ALL possible outcomes of whatever current situation Duterte is in. So much lying going on, yes? And so much more being kept from us deliberately, i.e., the state of President’s health. This lack of transparency is alarming because it cuts across everything, and as with all corrupt governments, it comes with the requisite bushel of lies.

But that’s stuff for another day. Right now, there’s a need to keep track of where we are, given the fact that it looks and feels like one of those instances when Duterte and his people are working overtime to ensure that they can keep the people under control, as they figure out how to handle what seems like a certainty: that Duterte will be unable to finish his term (just look at his face), or at least will want to get his term over with (just listen to what he says, over and over).

How many exits does Duterte need, or require, and who’s holding the door for him as he bids the Presidency goodbye?

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#Duterte to address the nation: here’s what to expect

From two years of experience, i.e., actually living in this country, suffering in real time the daily bombardment of anti-people rhetoric, the large-scale violence that is happening on our streets and in the countryside, the heavy burden of inflation and price hikes, the general exhaustion of having to deal with an incompetent unkind leadership, one already has a sense of how Rodrigo Duterte and his people operate. It is in fact a by-the-textbook populist strategy, one that they’ve been using since the campaign, one that they have continued to use with much success — he’s still President after all — the past two years. We’ve thought this government out-of-control, we’ve thought the communications team stupid and idiotic, we’ve called the President bastos and misogynist — but all of that is part of the plan, it is all chaos-by-design.

The announcement that the President will be speaking to the nation today, September 11, is no different. And because we’ve been here all this time, and we’ve heard Duterte doing his slurred, confused speeches too many times the past two years, we can already imagine what it is he’s going to say. Because unsurprisingly, he is redundant, and repetitive, and goes around in circles like a crazy person. And the only way we can continue to be productive and not get caught up in the shock of hearing him saying something offensive (because he will) and oppressive (because he will), is to already prepare ourselves for the worst. And with Duterte, everything IS already at its worst.  (more…)

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Duterte talks coup d’etat, weaves fiction, forgets the people

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.

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ChaCha: Duterte’s endgame #SONA2018 #NoToChaCha

The Duterte government is on overdrive, providing us all with requisite distractions from the fact that the Duterte-appointed consultative committee has drafted a federal constitution to the President’s liking, and we’re all back to this discussion, not about whether or not we even want charter change, or if it’s necessary at all, but about how it’s going to happen.

Let that sink in.

Duterte’s propagandists and chacha advocates have been able to bring it to this point when we’re not even discussing whether or not charter change will happen but how it will happen. The President and his people have muscled their way through this charter change push — we’re talking THREE different federal constitutions after all since August 2016 — and it has been able to do this by utilizing what we’ve seen government do consistently and viciously the past two years: chaos-by-design.

We complain that his communications team is terrible, that they are incompetent, but that is part of the grand design. One controversy over one incompetence over one corruption controversy, on loop, layered with the President’s big mouth, and here we are: faced with the threat of charter change so close, sold as a done deal, discussed as if we, the people, have no choice in it.

It is as Duterte and his men have planned. And I realize now that ChaCha was always been Duterte’s endgame, federalism not just a campaign promise he made, but a promise made to him.  (more…)

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ENOUGH

President Duterte has said he would resign if “enough women” protest the incident in South Korea, where on stage, in front of his Cabinet members and the Filipino community, he decided it proper to ask a woman he had handpicked from the audience to give him a kiss on the lips.

The woman said in an interview: “Nag-black<out> ako, hindi ko ma-explain, kinakabahan ako, natatakot, excited ako, thankful. Kasi kahit nasa Pilipinas ka, suntok sa buwan na makikita mo ‘yung President.” She then said the kiss was nothing but a way to entertain the audience – echoing what Duterte said after the incident. But her words highlight a critical fact of this encounter: the power relations between the President of the Philippines, and a female audience member.

It is Duterte’s power as President that made this encounter possible. It is Duterte’s power as President that dictated this woman’s reaction, which the President should have known to handle with dignity and distance: this reaction is borne of the fact of his position. But Duterte decided this moment was about him, and that he would use his power over this woman to ask for anything. The mere fact that he asked for a kiss already reeks of malice. (more…)