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.  (more…)