In the traditional first 100 days assessment of a President’s performance one does not really expect concrete results knowing the complexities of governance but within the first three months, the public should have an idea the direction that the president is leading the country to.
Duterte has made clear what the public can expect in the coming months: there will be more killings.
The numbers vary and are difficult to ascertain but the figure being mentioned in news reports of illegal drugs related deaths under Duterte’s rule range from 1,500 to 300,000. The numbers continue to increase every day.
If the allies of President Duterte in the Senate think that the public will never know the truth in the testimony of Edgar Matobato, self-confessed member of the Davao Death Squad, now that Sen. Leila de Lima has been ousted as chair of the committee on justice and human rights, they should be reminded that truth always finds its way to come out.
Not now, maybe. Sometimes, it takes a more circuitous route, but it will come out.
One of the stories Matobato narrated in his testimony last week was the alleged order of then Davao City mayor and now President Rodrigo Duterte to kill the bodyguards of former House Speaker Prospero Nograles who ran against Duterte’s daughter, Sara, for mayor in the 2010 elections.
We don’t have to enumerate bunglings by the Duterte communication team because Press Secretary Martin Andanar has admitted it.
“Tayo naman ay hindi perpekto ‘no, tayo’y nagkakamali din, pero Inaayos natin itong mga pagkakamali na ito (We are not perfect and we make mistakes. We are correcting our mistakes),” Andanar said in a radio interview.
At least he is humble enough to admit his mistakes which cannot be said of some communication officials of the previous president.
Andanar said in the current standard operating procedure for delivering the President’s messages it’s only Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella who will be speaking. Only if Abella is not available does he come in.
There’s an expression in English,”Cutting off the nose to spite the face” which refers to a person’s self-destructive action as he hits back at someone he thinks had done him wrong but his needless action actually hurts him more than the object of his anger.
That appears to be what President Duterte is doing against U.S. President Obama after his disastrous performance at the 2016 Asean summit in Vientiane Laos last week.
That sad thing about it is that, it is not himself that he is hurting but the country. And it was he who unnecessarily caused this series of snubs with his tirade against Obama in answer to a hypothetical question in a pre-departure for Asean summit press conference.
President Duterte at first played coy when asked about his assessment of his debut in the international stage in the 2016 summit of the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the 18-country East Asia Summit in Laos last week, upon his arrival from Jakarta where he proceeded after the Asean meetings saying it would be “self-serving.” But with little prodding he opened up, “I’m sure that if you’re a Filipino, you’d be proud of me.”
He said the only ones who would not be proud of what he did in Laos and Indonesia (where he proceeded for a state visit from Vientiane) are the “low-life sa press, iyong mga kolumnista, nothing is really too good to be true.”
“Pero hindi kayo napahiya (I did not embarrass you), I assure you, and everybody was clapping except for dalawa (two). But ah, bilib sila sa akin (they admired me),” he enthused. He declined to name who were the two.
Duterte was narrating the plenary session of the East Asia Summit last Thursday, Sep. 8. Participants in the East Asia Summit which follows the ASEAN summit are the 10 members of Asean namely Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam joined by dialogue partners Australia, China, Japan, India, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea, and United States.
Whatever one’s political leaning is, every Filipino wants to be proud of the President when he appears in the world stage.
He represents the Filipino people. His success is our success. His embarrassment is our embarrassment.
The 2016 Asean summit in Vientiane, Laos was President Duterte’s first official foreign trip. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the other world leaders, it was an opportunity for him to show the world his remarkable transition from city mayor to president of one of the Asia’s vibrant democracy.
As Philippine president, he had a prominent role in Laos Asean meeting because next year it will be the Philippines’ turn to host the summit of the 10-country regional grouping to be followed by meeting of leaders of ASEAN’s 10 dialogue partners which include China, Japan, South Korea , and the United States.
But he wasted that opportunity by his offensive remarks made on the eve of the summit directed to the leader of the world’s superpower whom he had not yet met in person and had not said anything bad about him.
The regrettable thing about it is that, those disgusting remarks were not warranted.
In trying to control the damage wrought by President Duterte’s verbal rampage against the United Nations in the early hours Sunday, Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay on Monday put the blame on media.
“It was done in the wee hours of the morning and he was very tired, “ Yasay said adding that the President “ already ended up the press conference … but the press were still leading him with a lot of questions, so it is in this context that he made this statements.”
Whose choice was it to hold the press conference at 1 a.m., Sunday? Why should the reporters be blamed for asking the questions at those unholy hours which the President earlier said was his normal working hours. Didn’t he say that he sleeps mornings and starts his day at 1 p.m.?
(Quote on immunity from suits starts at 17:40 mins)
In many of his speeches , President Rodrigo Duterte flaunts his immunity from suits as an armor amid mounting concerns about the extra-judicial killings in his campaign against illegal drugs.
In a speech before troops at Camp Gen. Macario B. Peralta, JR, Jamindan, Capiz last Aug. 5, he said, “Ang Presidente, hindi mo ma-demanda. ..mag-order ako ng patay, you cannot arrest me, may immunity ako.”
It’s not only those dealing with illegal drugs that he wants killed but all those he believes pose obstructions to his desire to improve the lives of the Filipino people.
I take him seriously because the president of the Republic of the Philippines is so powerful that with a stroke of a pen, he can save a life or send the nation to war.
Last Tuesday, President Duterte threatened to declare martial law.
“ Please, ‘wag mo akong… hindi ako gago. If this continues, pigilan mo ako eh ‘di sige. ‘Pag nagwala na...or would you rather that I will declare martial law?, he said before the Philippine Army’s 4th Infantry Division in Camp Evangelista in Cagayan de Oro.
Duterte was lashing out on Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno who stood up to him by reminding him of the separation of powers and other provisions in the Constitution which he could have violated when he read a list of alleged illegal drugs protector including seven judges. Others in more than 150 names in the list were congressmen, military officials, police officers, mayors, and vice mayors.
Do you feel sick watching daily images on TV and newspapers of people killed, lying lifeless on the sidewalks covered with newspapers or plastic with only their dirty feet and worn-out rubber slippers seen?
And of course near the corpse, the cardboard sign “Drug pusher ako, huwag tularan”, which has now become a standard accessory in President Duterte’s war against illegal drugs.
Studies have shown the ill-effects of being exposed to traumatic images.
In an article in the website of Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientist Roxane Cohen Silver of the University of California, Irvine and colleagues said “repeated exposure to vivid traumatic images from the media could lead to long-lasting negative consequences, not just for mental health but also for physical health. “
The article said Silver and her colleagues “speculated that such media exposure could result in a stress response that triggers various physiologic processes associated with increased health problems over time.”
That’s for those who are exposed to disturbing images in media. How much more with members of media who are up close to those gruesome scenes to capture them for the people to know what’s happening in the country.