The Matrix Revolution

One of the more amusing things El Jefe's drug wars have produced is this curious thing called a "drug matrix", a new nonsense term to go along with "drug personality", "criminality", and other purposefully tedious and vague verbiage.

Way back in 2016, the president unveiled his "drug matrix" wherein persons involved in the drug trade were revealed. It was a high profile affair as it concerned drug lords within the infamous New Bilibid Prison and Senator Leila de Lima. But what is a "drug matrix"? A drug matrix is basically a chart which shows the names (and faces if we're being fancy) of people involved in drug trafficking and also shows their links to one another. It's not unlike an organizational chart one would find in a private corporation. Here's a cleaned up, "professional" version:

The matrix makes constant references to the president's rival Senator De Lima but hey,  it could just be a coincidence.

What's amazing about the president's cheap-looking whiteboard chart is that everyone seemed to believe that the information on it was accurate, if not, the truth. How did the president arrive at his conclusions? Who knows. It's on a chart with text, lines, and scary-looking mystery silhouettes. It's like an episode of C.S.I.! It looks like serious police work so it must be true!

The police have followed in the president's footsteps and have been making matrices(?) of their own. Apparently, this is how they operate now and they have a matrix for everything. I heard a few weeks ago, on the radio, a police officer being interviewed about some dead guy or something. "He was in our matrix." he said. Well, I guess that settles that. He was in THE MATRIX and only really bad dudes are in the matrix. Who's hungry?

Maybe people believe it just because of the way it sounds. Judging by the way campaign season is going, it's obvious Filipinos are tragically very easy to impress. If it sounds official and vaguely scary, sure. Personally, I find it funny. When I hear "the matrix", I tend to imagine people in trench coats chasing each other on the roof while dodging bullets in slow motion. In reality, however, people are being shot in fast motion and there's no waking up from the simulation or anything like that.

Imagine: death via powerpoint presentation.

The War Goes On

People are "alarmed" about the recent uptick of killings in Duterte's drug war. It's a forever war, apparently, as the president has made clear he'll be fighting until the end of his term. Duterte promised during the presidential campaign to stamp out the drug menace within six months. It's doubtful anyone seriously believed this. The promise people did believe however, was that Duterte was going to kill all the "bad people" involved in drug crimes. A politician keeping his campaign promise to kill people...it's pretty funny. 

So why the alarm? Duterte made no secret about what he planned to do. Even now he still casually talks about having people shot as casually as one would talk about the weather.

As much as the priests and elites whine about the "sanctity of life" or whatever, they can't deny the fact that Filipinos elected Duterte as their president. He won! He won on a "just shoot 'em" platform. How can one reconcile their ideas about Philippine society with harsh reality? Perhaps it's time these people had a critical re-examination of the world we live in. They hold an image of Filipino society that's no longer true. The old idea was that Filipinos are spiritual, moral, deeply devout, good Christians, etc. If that's the case, why are Filipinos OK with all of this? In fact, why are we OK with a lot things that we shouldn't be OK with? 

Our society is rotten to the core. The election of Duterte was an admission of that. If government must be evil then we might as well put that evil to use. True to form, as was in morally bankrupt tyrannical governments of the past, the state conducts its grim business in a brutally utilitarian fashion. There's only numbers. How many people dead this week? We've given up on the niceties of due process and such.

I'm not sure how I feel about seeing Filipino society descend into total cynicism. I am indifferent but lately I've been troubled but I can't seem to organize my thoughts on this. 

Something deeper is going on here. 

Unhappy Marriage

So we're "separating" ourselves from the United States now, whatever that means. You can never tell with Duterte. 

"Separation" is a loaded word. This joke has probably been made before but perhaps he meant it as a lawyer would. We are legally separated from the US. It wasn't an annulment or a divorce. The marriage is still on because the state has an interest in keeping Filipinos miserable together. Thank God for that! 

Does this mean the US still has visitation rights? What about support? Seems we don't want any of their aid. That's an interesting question. Can support be waived? I'm sure a child can't. But the Philippines is all grown up now and doesn't need his white papa telling him what to do. We don't need papa Sam to deal with that Chinese bully on the playground; a bully that happens to have more soldiers, tanks and planes that we can even begin to fathom. They have nukes too but our constitution forbids us from having nuclear weapons. Our moral high ground is unassailable at least.

So what did we get out of Duterte's trip to China. Well, we got some deals of questionable value. It's interesting that we respond to China's saber-rattling by indebting ourselves to them, as if China needed any more leverage. But good news! China just recently gave us permission to fish on our own territory. Isn't that kind of them? Now we're getting contracts from Chinese companies drenched in corruption. It's a perfect fit.

This deal is getting worse all the time.

Pass the Fare Money

It goes without saying that traffic in that hellhole, Manila is downright intolerable. Congress plans to grant the President "emergency powers" to solve what is now considered a national crisis. Right, because Manila's problems are also problems for the rest of us backwoods yokels. 

Autocalypse

In fairness, the traffic situation in Cebu is nearing Manila levels of awful too.

When one uses the term "emergency powers", what comes to mind is usually the image of troops deploying, collapsing buildings, flash floods, typhoons, epidemics etc. It really says a lot that the traffic situation is so horrible that it's considered on the level of a natural calamity, as if people are starving in their cars. Oh, but this is a man-made disaster, don't you forget that. So now Congress wants to undo years of poor planning and/or outright neglect and wants Duterte to cut through the bureaucracy and get things done.

While Congress probably has the ability to grant the President this power, as some legal smart ass can probably look up/cook up one,  there are some genuine concerns. What powers exactly are they giving the President? For how long? How long is this "emergency" going to be and when will it be considered over? Does it cover the entire Philippines or just that cesspit, Manila? What other agencies will be involved, if any? What is the system of accountability in case of abuses? Have you ever noticed that news articles covering this issue are terribly vague about everything?

Unless armed rebels are actually blocking the public roads, it's hard to imagine what the people are honestly expecting the President to do. Has it ever happened in the past that a President was given emergency powers to solve what is basically a municipal issue?

Ah, there it is. Enough questions. It's time to analyze.

Here's a thought: giving emergency powers to the president will not allow something to be done which cannot already be done now without having to give president emergency powers. Really, giving the president these powers will not add anything new to the mix. All it does is pass the buck from the people who are supposed to be in charge of the problem to the president and THAT'S THE POINT of this whole exercise; to pass the buck.

It's not about the traffic.

Nobody wants to admit this but enacting genuine solutions to the traffic problem is going to be painful. For example; the government wants to widen the roads or build a new highway. In a metropolis like Manila, that will require exercising eminent domain which means paying just compensation. You're gonna have to pay the landowners and in some parts of Manila, you might as well be donating your organs too. If the government wants to expand the MRT network, the government is gonna have to spend a lot of money too and government officials (if they're really serious about solving the problem) will be forced to curb their tendency for corruption. Even reclaiming land occupied by squatters to make room for new infrastructure, will be costly and not just in monetary terms if you know what that means. To add to all of this, Metro Manila is composed of many cities so that means the local politicians will have to -ugh- put aside their politicking and work together! L'horreur!

So really, the geniuses in charge don't want to have to deal with this. Decades this problem has simmered and the people and institutions that were supposed to be on top of this just wet the bed. Whether it's a lack of political will, resources or just plain laziness, they don't want to have to get their act together and would rather just let the president tell them what to do. Besides, the president is still popular and can absorb the negative repercussions of the hard decisions that will have to be made. If that doesn't work, he can put on the tough guy act and ram whatever he wants done through. Ladies and gentlemen, if you've ever wondered what's so appealing about a dictatorship, here you go. 

Isn't it ironic that in a time when people are supposedly clamoring for "federalism", they're begging for a centralized response to a problem the local governments are too impotent to fix? Pathetic.

So if anyone talks about the president needing emergency powers to solve the traffic problems, know that that person is an idiot unwittingly engaging in the government's mind games. The talk of emergency powers serves a second purpose. Instead of asking about how we're going to fix the problem, the question now is when are we giving the president emergency powers. Excuse me, powers to do what, again? Oh, see? It's the president now who has to tell us the how of the matter. Not only are they passing the problem to him but also the responsibility to come up with solutions. In the end, the government is still stalling even now!

I want off this ride.

Genius or Idiot?

There are two ways to look at Duterte.

The first way is to look at him is that he is a master politician, a real Machiavellian type. After all, he has thirty years of experience as a Mayor and practiced Law before that as well. Everything he does is tactical and with good reason. The whole lashing out against the international community, America in particular, is just red meat for his supporters. He will bring about genuine change and put the country on the right track politically, socially and economically. Duterte knows the real score and in the end, he will do what's in the best interests of the Philippines.

The second way to look at him is that he really is an idiot. He's a dirty loudmouth who believes his own hype and got elected merely by virtue of the sheer ineptness of the previous administration and the people's hunger for change. He's  a one-trick pony whose only gimmick is summary executions of criminals. He's a no-good leftist who honestly buys into the red propaganda and blames "the West" for all our problems and is putting our standing in the world at risk. It's possible he's an agent or a shill for the Chinese.

Take your pick. You know, life is full of ironies. One of my favorites is that we live in an age when so much information is at our fingertips yet people are still as uninformed as ever. So go with whatever version of reality you want, you idiot. Whatever happens, happens.

Pray reality never rears its ugly head.

Ideas Explained And Defended: Due Process

The noisy critics of today's administration and the one before and even the one before that and so on, love to throw around phrases and concepts so much that they have become meaningless. Stuff like "human rights" and "due process" are harped on as if the beauty and goodness of these things are already self-evident. They're not. No matter how good an idea is, one can't act as if its value is already so undeniable that he doesn't even have to defend it in front of others. These ideas have been taken for granted by its defenders and the people. Good ideas must be defended constantly for they are always under assault by those who have either forgotten their worth or are willfully ignorant of them.

This is the first of a series of writings wherein I'll attempt to defend important ideas that are worth defending in Philippine society. I'm not the smartest man in the world and I don't pretend to be smarter than anyone else in any given room, but someone has to do this job, right?

Due Process

Ask any Law student or one learned in the Law what "due process" is and he'd probably refer you to Section 1, Article III of the 1987 Constitution which states plainly that no person can be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. That's fine and dandy but it doesn't exactly explain what "due process" is. The simplest answer is best and it helps that it's biblical to boot. "Due process" means that you are heard before you are condemned. In other words, you're given a fair chance to defend yourself, often in a court, before the hammer is dropped on you.

If you look at the whole breadth of human history, you'll notice that it's always been the story of the strong oppressing the weak. There are exceptions sure, but for the most part, it's a story about absolute power and its abuse. Kings, tyrants, slavery, war, etc. Man was helpless against those who lorded over him. When you think about it, due process as a regular "must have" feature of modern constitutions and laws is only a relatively recent advancement.

The Magna Carta is perhaps the most famous example although there are probably earlier examples of checks against absolute and arbitrary exercises of power against the individual. Even before the Spanish colonized the Philippines, some indigenous communities here had justice systems. Some would have suspects go before the Datu and elders or go through trials-by-ordeal to determine their guilt. Granted, it wasn't exactly a scientific method. I doubt dunking ones hands in boiling water is a more accurate system than what we have now.

Due process is important because the state is, compared to the individual, an all powerful monster. It's especially worse in a country like the Philippines where the government is corrupt and abusive. What are you going to do when the state throws the whole government apparatus at you, plus the army, navy, air force and the BIR(gasp!)? I bet you'd be glad for Article III, wouldn't you?  

I think that Filipinos don't really have a problem with "due process" as a concept if you explain in in terms of protecting the vulnerable. People generally aren't comfortable with the idea of the police whisking them away in the dead of night to lock them in a windowless cell. The problem is that we don't have a speedy and efficient system to give proper due process. It's no secret that the justice system in the Philippines is quite terrible. "Everyone will have their day in court." is the promise. Well, here in the Philippines, we do one better - everyone gets years! Cases drag on way past the point when time makes any rational sense. There are the horror stories of detainees spending years in jail even before their case even crosses a judge's table. The prisons are horribly overcrowded too. All this isn't even mentioning the corruption which is endemic in all levels of the government service. Then you have police abuses, special treatment for the rich and powerful, etc. It's no wonder then that "due process" has become such an odious phrase to people. The image it conjures up isn't one of justice but of excruciating torture in a country where the process itself seems to be the punishment.

This is the sad thing about all this. It's not that "due process" is bad but that we're bad at it. Our leaders don't seem to even want to give it a chance. Instead of taking measures to fix the system and finding common sense solutions, it seems we're prepared to  just do away with the whole damn thing entirely. It's like burning a house to rid it of rats. "Due process", one of the greatest gifts bestowed on our society, a treasure inherited from the best traditions of liberal democracy and a cornerstone of civilization, is just done away with because we don't have the determination and will to make it work. Are we that ungrateful and lazy? Screw a trial, just kill them all. Are we really heading to the point, ladies and gentlemen, where our ancestors in the ancient barangays got better treatment than we do today in 2016?

Here's a novel idea: why don't we fix the system first before we scrap it? Why not open more courts, appoint more judges, build more prisons, modernize the bureaucracy, upgrade our technology to keep digital records, give more resources to barangay-level  mediation, pass laws improving the legal system, aggressively root out corrupt court personnel, etc? I'd just like to point out that Duterte technically isn't fixing anything by the way. After six years, will "due process" still be a dirty word? Will there still be believers?

We'll all get what's coming to us eventually. 

"The Man" Is He Who Has The Plan

Much criticism has been made against Duterte and his methods. Predictably, the cry of "Human rights!" is used by his opponents as well as the tiresome phrase of "due process". These criticisms aren't enough. If you really want to get at the President, you have to do something radical.

Allow me to explain how the present criticisms of Duterte simply won't work and how one can really make a dent on the Duterte machine.

Let us begin with the status quo or rather, what was once the status quo. The Philippines was at best, stagnant and at worst,  a car careening downhill with no brakes. The situation had become insufferable. The presidential candidates last election season, before Duterte entered the scene and mowed over them like an eighteen-wheeler, either offered more of the same crap or "change" that amounted to little toppings on a pile of cow dung. This wasn't good enough. People wanted real change; preferably of the drastic kind. Along comes a man from Davao making outlandish promises like solving crime in six months or less. The people picked Duterte because he was so unlike the others and promised to take the country to a radical direction. At that point, it didn't matter what he said but only that he was going to do something extreme. It's like that scenario where you're stuck in a really terrible place and you scream, "Anywhere but here!" The people at that point were desperate for Duterte to just take them somewhere else - anywhere but the quagmire of Pnoy's do-nothing, let-it-burn presidency.

Now this is key. The critics today fail to understand the circumstances that fueled El Jefe's rise to power. It's not enough to criticize Duterte's methods. One must also provide a vision and solution that's better than what Duterte is selling. People chose Duterte because they thought he could fix the country's problems. If you criticize Duterte but don't also step up and offer your own fixes, people won't give you the time of day.

Let me put it this way: there is a big bad problem. That's the given. Duterte comes in and offers his solution. It's not the best solution. It's not an elegant solution. It's messy and it's a slow poison to our civil society in the grand scheme of things but it's a solution. Everybody criticizes Duterte's solution but nobody offers alternatives. Duterte wins by default.

Duterte's critics lose because people want solutions and they have none. It's especially worse for critics who were toadies for the previous administration. They can't even accept the "given" in the equation. To them, the Philippines was just fine and Duterte is ruining all the imaginary gains we made. No, the Philippines wasn't "just fine". Step one is admitting there's a problem. If you don't even admit that there's a problem, you're at less than square one. Stop fighting for the status quo. Admit the situation sucks and outdo Duterte in offering actual solutions. That's the only way you can beat him. 

Everyone is sick of the same old crap and wants to move forward. Duterte is the only one who has the momentum. Notice how he controls the narrative, how he's basically setting the terms for the national conversation everytime he deigns to give the media his attention. He has framed himself as one who looks to the future. Burying Marcos? It's more symbolic than anything. Duterte is framing himself as one making actual progress. A serious critic must not allow him to do this. One must SEIZE the momentum; take the initiative from the President. The President is selling radical change and it's selling well. A competitor must also offer radical change but one that's even better. A serious critic must not allow the President to have the monopoly. Ah, but that would require a certain boldness and a willingness to swallow one's pride and admit that the past was a failure. How some people cling to the past...

Anyway, I really should write about things other than politics.

Rowdy Rody's Dirty Laundry

Dirty Laundry

This administration is a gold mine. God bless Duterte. God bless him.

Go ask the older folks if they have ever seen a President do this. Ask them if they've ever seen a President engage in brazen prime time mudslinging to such a nasty degree. De Lima always fancied herself as some kind of smart ass so why bother playing at taking the high road? You can't beat her at pompous moral posturing so a different tactic is required. Who knew that for El Jefe, that would mean accusing her of having an affair with a married man and implying that they benefit from drug money? 

You should have seen De Lima. It was unexpected. She was totally unprepared, the poor devil. It was a kidney punch.

Critics say it was dirty and uncalled for but in case you haven't noticed, we are well past that point already. It seems everything is getting pried open in the Philippines. Sure it was nasty, but in a way, it was tactically brilliant. Today was the Senate hearing on the extrajudicial killings. Thanks to Duterte, nobody can pay attention to the proceedings. All people can do is look at De Lima and think, "Wow. Somebody is actually banging this dumpy broad?", and everyone will forget what actually happened.

UN-necessary

The papers today reported that Duterte got fed up with international criticism of the extrajudicial killings so he threatened to leave the United Nations. I laugh."Threaten"? Threaten who? Let's not pretend we're a member of the security council. We're more of a dependent than anything. What about all the foreign aid? Yolanda?

But of course, it's all straightened out later that Duterte was exaggerating and so forth. You know, it's getting a little tiresome. On the one hand, we're supposed to take Duterte seriously but on the other, we're not supposed to take him seriously. He means what he says except when he doesn't? My advice: Duterte should cross his fingers and show it to us when he speaks off the cuff. It'll be our little sign; our little in-joke. If he crosses his fingers, he doesn't mean it and he's just trolling the media. Tee-hee!

Look, he's mad at the U.N. Understandable. It really is a useless organization. But he shouldn't make so much noise. If I've learnt anything from the many dictators, armed groups and genocidal maniacs in the world, it's a safe bet to just ignore the U.N. Just ignore it. I doubt the U.N. sincerely cares about brown people Filipino lives any more than we do.

I hope this man is President for life.

The Old Ways And The New

It was inevitable.

It was only a matter of time that El Jefe would clash with the Chief Justice. They represent opposite ideas that are destined to collide with each other. The President said himself that there's no "due process" as far as he's concerned and wants to solve the crime problem the fast and dirty way. The Chief Justice, on the other hand, is a symbol of the usual way we do things. She stands for the "rule of law" and other tiresome phrases like that.

One should take the time to study these current events well. All we can do is observe. There are no laboratories or experiments. There is only history and it's maddeningly circular patterns.

People are tired of the old ways. They're tired because it's painfully obvious that they didn't work. That's why a lot of things that we once thought were unquestionable are now being questioned. This spat with the judiciary is just a symptom of an underlying condition. The judiciary is fast becoming irrelevant and obsolete. A lot of things are becoming irrelevant and obsolete. There is a new wave happening and the Chief Justice just got swept away by it. Oh, I know that Duterte apologized (sort of) to the Chief Justice, but the damage was done.

To put it simply, Filipinos are now in a mood to try reversing course on the traditionally held orthodoxies of Filipino culture. The old rule of law and due process shtick isn't working so now Filipinos want to try Duterte's methods. Our centralized bureaucracy is horribly inefficient so there's a serious move to federalize. The constitution is a cumbersome and increasingly irrelevant document so there's a move to amend (or even revise) it. We have a President who has a disturbingly chummy relationship with the reds at the start although it's rocky at the moment.

Duterte just coming out and saying that we should just go ahead and bury Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, I think, encapsulates perfectly the zeitgeist of today. People want to do away with the past, and the ways of thinking it spawned, even if it means sacrificing that which we once considered holy. Even if Marcos was a villain, and he was a villain no matter how you slice it, people are willing to commit one last injustice to the victims of his rule if doing so would finally free us from our historical baggage and let us move on with our goddamn lives.

Same thing could be said with the daily killings of suspected drug criminals. The old Philippines would huff and puff about how killing is wrong, about the "culture of violence" and about the "rule of law" and so on. Nowadays, people are asking, "Why not?". It's very unusual since Filipino mentality is timid and reluctant to question stuff that are thought to be important. I don't know the reason. Perhaps it's just the sheer exasperation and desperation of the people. Perhaps our institutions have degraded to such a phenomenal extent that people do not have any faith in it anymore and are slowly putting all their faith on a single man instead. The constant attention Duterte gets and the very aggressive and, dare I say, dictatorial way he deals with problems reminds me of certain people. But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. Thinking of those comparisons too quickly is not good also.

How long can this movement be maintained? How far are we willing to go? Who knows what the next sacred cow of Philippine politics is going to be sent to the butcher shop. I predict that divorce may be coming in one or a few year from now. Ultimately, it doesn't matter to me though. It's simply amusing to me seeing all this unfold. It's amusing for now at least,  but maybe not so when they start rounding people up, me included.

Just enjoy the ride.

Drug Dudes Done In Dirt Cheap

The Philippines is kind of like a kitchen at midnight. Turn on the lights and you'll see it's swarming with cockroaches. Try to focus on a problem and you'll see how it's even more terrible than you imagined.

I knew the Philippines had a drug problem but I never thought it was this bad. Suspected drug peddlers and users are coming out of the woodwork, out of trees and manholes it seems, to "surrender" to the government. This is a little odd to me. See, people are admitting to their crimes but they just sign a thing? Acknowledge they've been bad little boys and promise not to do it again? Some have suggested hooking these people up with jobs instead of drugs but where are you going to find jobs for thousands of people who have admitted to a history of crime or drug use and most of whom probably aren't that bright to begin with?

Those who don't surrender are simply shot. It seems people are being killed daily. Instead of crying about the end of the "rule of law", let's play the devil's advocate.

Realistically speaking, a Filipino life is fairly worthless in the grand scheme of things. Years of rampant population growth coupled with general neglect (governmental or societal) to improve our human capital have made the Philippines a country filled with disposable people. Hell, I know I'm not exempt from this calculation. Someone could kill me tomorrow and it wouldn't even matter. Sure, some of the people who know me would probably be a little bummed but that feeling will eventually pass.

What I'm saying is that the Philippines, a country of about ninety-eight million people and rising, can absorb these losses. Maybe we can stand to lose a few hundreds, thousands or even a million? If a million Filipinos disappeared, would anyone notice? I doubt it. People hardly notice each other as it is. 

Maybe the lack of outrage over the spate of killings means that the people have finally realized and come to terms with the glaring truth that was always staring them in the face like a beggar on the other side of the car window. Life is cheap in the Philippines. If you aren't being slaughtered like a pig in the name of progress, you're busy being milked like a cow for all your ungrateful dependents. People are treated like cattle, from cradle to crave, being herded through the various institutions happy to mold them into the perfect worker/consumer. Employers treat their very replaceable employees like dirt because they're dirt cheap. We even export our surplus meat to foreign markets and call it heroic.

So what's a few deaths honestly?

SONA 2016

Might as well write about President Duterte's first State of the Nation speech. What else is there to talk about.

The whole SONA thing has been whittled down to a pointless exercise despite the clear significance of the President himself appearing before the people's representatives. In the past, the SONA just became a glorified showbiz party where the President preaches to the choir and toots his own horn about what a swell job he's doing and how great everything is. My expectations were low, especially considering we're barely into the President's first year in office.

As it turns out, the speech was alright. It set the agenda at least. It was a rambling speech but no surprise there since Duterte prefers speaking off the cuff. So let's go down the several things we can take away from this speech, shall we?

1. Forward, not backward

Immediately, the speech hit the right notes with me. As the handful of people who read this blog know, I've written about how the Philippines suffers from the baggage of its past, specifically, the People Power movement. This was most pronounced during the reign of Pnoy when everything he thought and did was framed in the yellow mentality. The self-righteousness was overwhelming and it led to a lot of vindictiveness and an "the pure us versus the evil them" mentality.

So we're moving forward now to new things. No more of the blame game Pnoy was so fond of. That's good. Finally. Let's move on.

2. Law and order

Well, it is his winning issue. Not a lot of people would disagree when you say that the justice system in the Philippines has gone down the toilet. However, Duterte seems to talk about justice in broad terms. He only ever goes into specifics when it's about drug crimes, speaking of which...

3. The purging will continue

If you had a problem with the extrajudicial killings of suspected drug criminals, perhaps it's time to just get used to it. El Jefe made it clear that the police and military have the backing of the office of the Presidency. He said he was going to fix our crime problem in six months. Expect the killings to continue until some measure of improvement is made somewhere.

It begs the question though; what if six months isn't enough? Whait if the killings have to go on for the whole six years Duterte is in office? Can such an effort be sustained? Is there a chance this will spiral out of control? Does anyone really care? On the last bit, probably not. We'll just have to pretend the government is really killing the bad guys and nothing underhanded is going on. No problem, I've had to live my life with even bigger delusions than that.

4. Double speak and sweet nothings

I'm convinced that Duterte is some kind of grand-master politician since nobody seemed to have picked up on these. Despite insulting the Pope and calling the Catholic Church the most hypocritical institution in the Philippines, he said that while he believes in separation of church and state, there should be no separation between God and state. That's pleasing to hear for both religious and non-religious. It means nothing but it made a good sound bite.

 Human rights must uplift human dignity but mustn't be used to destroy the country, he says. So it's good except when it's bad. There's a subtle hint that he won't let the bleeding-hearts get in his way but we know that already. Ultimately pointless.

The Philippines will address global warming but will not compromise development. Again, a crowd-pleaser for both sides of the aisle.

As for the international scene, we remain committed to dialogue and cooperation even to those who won't enter dialogue or cooperate. That's the default. We're weak We're literally incapable of any other position. If only the tough guy act worked outside the Philippines, huh? For now, we remain China's victim.

5. The only dangerous bit

Duterte wants peace talks with the Communists and Muslim separatists. In a perfect world, the Philippines would have wiped these scumbags out already. They have no legitimacy in my eyes since they are, you know, threats to our sovereignty? They're rebels? Lest we forget, these guys are no good and are hardly trustworthy with their occasional acts of barbarity.

Anyway, it's not a perfect world and the Philippines has been unable to defeat them for decades so it might as well try a new (old) tack of peace talks (again). I realize that I live in the city and not in some podunk, backwater barrio where the threat of the NPA or MILF suddenly deciding to swing by and slit your throat, is a remote possibility. I guess there's nothing to do but hope that El Jefe knows what he's doing. Forget the drug war, this thing here is actually the most dangerous play Duterte will have a part in as a bad deal would tie into another thing which he's pushing, which is...

6. Federalism at last?

He wants it done. It remains to be seen since this is all on Congress, not the President. Can Congress actually get off their good-for-nothing asses and get it done? Are they competent enough to make the right amendments and changes to the constitution without any backdoors or hidden benefits for vested interests? What standards does Duterte want so he won't veto it? 

It all remains to be seen but wow, it's surreal to hear people actually talking about it. Here I thought that serious reforms to our nearly three decade old constitution wasn't possible. I sincerely doubt that whatever Congress comes up with will be the very best possible product. Gone is the idea of Congress as an august body of the very best the Philippines has to offer. There will be a lot of hand-wringing and cries of "what about MY interests?" but maybe this President can whip them into shape.

7. Candy shower

Then we have the assorted bromides about the wonderful things the government has in store for the next few years. It's like the candy politicians throw at the proles during rallies. It's sweet but not filling and we've heard them all before.

I can't write a separate section for how Duterte will cut red tape, fix traffic, give free wi-fi and all that. Just put it under a tab labelled "promises" and be done with it. The only difference today is that we have a guy who just might actually mean what he says and that's what gets the people so excited. Personally, I think it's just red meat but if Duterte can accomplish at least half of these minor promises, people will probably be fine with that.

Summary

Duterte promises not just a strong government but an effective one; a government that can actually get things done. After years in the mire of the Pnoy brand do-nothing Presidency, this is like rain in the desert.

However, talk is cheap and politicians are rich men. As always, we shall see.

At least it won't be a boring Presidency this time.

Killing Mary Jane

Mary Jane Veloso, if you remember, was a Filipina who was caught smuggling heroin into Indonesia. The punishment for such a crime in Indonesia is death.

"Outrageous!" was the cry of the masses. "Human rights!" Filipinos, many of whom travel overseas, sympathized with her. She was the right character for the story that was to be told for mass consumption. Ah yes, the poor, exploited Filipino overseas worker. We all know that one. Her case made headlines and the government gave this incident more attention than it usually does in matters concerning the Filipinos' well being. Hell, even Manny Pacquiao visited her and gave her some money and a bible or something. Back then, Pnoy wanted a nice feel-good story to give his numbers a little boost. It kind of worked. Her execution was stayed while the rest of the other foreigners who were caught were met their ends.

What's the point of this?

Apparently, society now feels that it is morally acceptable to summarily execute criminals, especially those involved in drug-related crimes. Therefore, it ought to have no problem then with Mary Jane getting the axe. Why not?  Just smoke her ass. Bang! Bang!

Before you cry about how she was duped and how it was someone else who planted the drugs, think on what you're crying about. You're arguing for her innocence, yes? Evidence? Circumstances? Isn't that what people typically do in, hmm what was it called? A trial? Oh yeah. So she gets a trial because she's sympathetic enough to you but the regular filth on our streets don't? In this way, supporting Duterte's plan to kill the bad guys without a trial yet trying to find reasons to keep Mary Jane alive after she's been found guilty in a court, is hypocrisy.

There is the central conceit that lies in the heart of Duterte and his fans' support for extrajudicial killings. The conceit is that the people that are going to be (and are being) killed are all, without exception, irredeemable scumbags who are nothing like the saintly Mary Jane. We know "deep in our hearts" that Mary Jane is innocent just as we all know "deep in our hearts" that the weekly corpse on the street was no doubt guilty as sin. Feelings. Because that's what it all comes down to doesn't it, when you take due process out of the equation? It all comes down to how good the sob story of the wrongdoer is. If Indonesia were to adopt our mentality, Mary Jane would have been shot shortly after the discovery of the drugs and Joko Widodo would have taken a page from Duterte and told us to go fuck ourselves.

Oh but we're only going to kill the really bad guys like drug lords. Uh huh. The Davao Death Squad didn't kill only drug lords. Don't be naive. It's mental programming. "Drug lord" is mentioned a lot so that when we hear about how some alleged criminal got shot, we've already been trained to imagine him as the worst of the worst regardless of the circumstance. It's classical political strategy to paint your intended victim in the worst possible extreme. Imagine the Indonesian media painting a not so flattering picture of Mary Jane as yet another  disrespectful foreigner among many, feigning ignorance  and bringing the drug menace to their country. See? It's all a matter of perspective. Feelings. We feel you're either innocent or guilty.

It may seem I'm against the killing of criminals but it's a little complicated. I'll explain my stance another time.

Just wanted to rant.

El Jefe, La Iglesia Catolica y La Familia

Boy, El Jefe is certainly shaping up to be the real "change" President. Federalism? Charter change? Getting rid of the sixty-forty? Duterte seems like the kind of candidate keyboard jockeys on the internet have been dreaming of.

Recently, Duterte did what no other President before him had the guts to do. He called out the Catholic church as a bunch of hypocrites. I guess he can do that now that he's won but still, it's amazing. Conventional wisdom always had it that you don't want to go against the church. Hence. many candidates do not take the controversial positions like pro-divorce or pro-abortion. This aura of power stems mainly from the role the church played in the People Power movement.

A legacy of Sin, so to speak. (He called distributing condoms "intrinsically evil", BTW)

I've always been skeptical about this. Sure, groups like Iglesia ni Cristo do wield actual power since they have no qualms about playing the game and vote by bloc; their members voting according to the orders of their leaders. But the Catholic church? It doesn't exactly force people to vote the way they want to. The best they can do nowadays are passive-aggressive statements of fatuous moralizing. But is the fear that they can whip up enough people to march on the streets still a valid one? Personally, I think their power has waned. People were frustrated enough of the status quo to elect Duterte, an alleged killer, into office and the church is as "status quo" as you can get. Nevertheless, with Duterte's recent comments and his commitment to family planning, the church's power will be tested. We shall see.

Speaking of family planning, I'm not fond of the idea the RH Law has, as I have written before. Not because of some religious concern, mind you, but because I think government has no business subsidizing people's sex lives at the taxpayer expense. Let people buy their own goddamn condoms. You mean to tell me if drunkard Pedro decides to bang his wife four times a week, the Philippine public has to pay for it? I also have doubts of its effectiveness since it merely gives free stuff and doesn't use any coercive power on families to control their size but I digress. 

You know, family planning has been done before. During Martial Law, the Population Commission was created to do pretty much the same things we want to do today. So what happened? Has it made any impact? Surely there would be data by now to show if its methods were effective. Did they stop? There was a point where they were operational so what's the data on that? Did they reduce population growth because it seems like they didn't. I can't pull facts and figures out of nowhere and it's not easy to simply get data on this but I think it would be valuable.

That's worth looking into.

El Jefe

Looks like it's in the body bag for Duterte. It wasn't even close. He enjoyed a comfortable lead of about five million. Poe and Mar have conceded. Yup, we're heading there. I'm thinking that since I call Pnoy "El Presidente", I should have a monicker for our new overlord chief executive. How does "El Jefe" sound?

Heading where? Who knows exactly but I'm glad that the answer to my question will be revealed. See, I've always wondered if Duterte is some kind of cunning ultra-pragmatist who's only putting on the tough guy act for the rubes and that his strongman style leadership in Davao was more out of necessity than desire. Maybe he wasn't really serious about the whole "kill'em all" promos and the statement about abolishing Congress (I wish) and that he would become more like a statesman as he comes into power. We shall see, won't we? Already there's talk of a liquor ban and curfew. Ha! How fast can you say, "buyer's remorse"?

Vice-President is neck and neck between the Marcos and Robredo. Maybe Marcos going on about how martial law was so cool and other statements of blatant revisionism hurt him? Perhaps putting a Marcos next in line was a bridge too far.

If Robredo wins, the yellows will have one of their own next in line. It would only be a matter of removing Duterte for them to grab power again. They deny this but come on. They'll probably try.

Will they try to impeach Duterte immediately? Even a dummy like Pnoy might realize that's poor form. The man won by a relatively big margin. The people have spoken and trying to impeach him is like giving a gigantic middle finger to the populace. Sounds like a perfect job for Trillanes.

What if Duterte is killed? That would be ironic but I think that's ridiculous.  

The next six years are really gonna be something.

Jokes For Folks

People went crazy, and are still going crazy, about Duterte's rape joke. Some are saying that he's never gonna win now. I don't think so.

It's too late in the game; the train has left the station. If Duterte's has come this far despite himself, one measly controversy about a rape joke won't stop him. How funny is it that Duterte's popular image, a vulgar guy who summarily kills people without trial, has been tacitly accepted but because he joked about rape, he's now morally questionable all of a sudden? They're making a bigger deal out of this than the other batshit crazy things he's said in the past. Oh, so now we're not gonna go along? "I don't care if he kills people, he made a rape joke and it's that I can't stand!" 

Give me a break.

The Duterte Code

He caused quite a stir but that's to be expected. Duterte is an extreme personality so naturally, he draws extreme reactions. He's no joke. While it's a given that Mindanao is pretty much in his pocket, the fact that he received a sizable chunk of support in Manila upon filing his candidacy, has the traditional Northern elite a little worried. The thinking is that the boost in support is temporary and as the voters know more about him and Duterte overexposes himself, his support will eventually wane. Hey, whatever helps one sleep at night.

This is gonna be a long post so grab a comfy chair.

I have a theory on why Duterte is enjoying a lot more support than people expected. When the human body is under attack by a virus, it will of course, react by sending antibodies. The Philippines has had years of terrible leadership under PNoy. PNoy is a pantywaist to put it simply. All he does is open his mouth and then promptly put his foot in it. He's incompetent, indecisive, and worst of all, indifferent. Couple all that with the general breakdown of law and order and the demoralizing fact that the Maguindanao massacre trial is still going on, you can see how a man like Duterte could enjoy such widespread support. When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they will naturally favor the strong horse. People look at PNoy and all they see is weakness. People see in Duterte a man who can get things done. His rise is but a natural response to the seeming inability of our government to do any goddamn thing. Must I go over the many times our President fiddled while the country burned? How are the Yolanda victims doing? Why don't we ask them what they think?

The rise of Duterte is born mainly from anger and frustration. Filipinos of course, are an unusually emotional lot. The arguments for Duterte tend to appeal to feelings about how horrible it is to be victimized by crime and so on. Filipinos are gullible too by the way. Why don't we go over this whole thing, shall we?

Death Squad

One of the selling points of Duterte is that he's tough on crime. "Tough" is an understatement. If you believe in his personal mythology, Duterte solves crime by simply killing the criminals without a trial. Trials are slow but bullets are indeed faster.

Summary executions, eh? I thought Filipinos hated killings and forced disappearances? Oh, that's right, it's OK when it's the correct people who are killed. We're such a bunch of hypocrites. It's alright to slaughter people only if they're criminals because fuck them, right? Well this whole thing with the death squads relies on two major premises: firstly, that Duterte will only use his powers for good and secondly, criminals and ONLY criminals will be killed. To believe in these is to be hopelessly and dangerously naive.

It's ironic that people who decry the justice system as irredeemably flawed (it has its many flaws to be fair) believes that a single man can be so flawless; flawless enough to entrust to him the power to play god. To say he's playing god is apt since it would take nothing but blind faith to believe that Duterte, a politician like any other, could do what he does perfectly and with nothing but warm and fuzzy intentions. Bullshit. If a man has that much power over life and death, it would be so tempting to simply take out your critics, rivals or anyone really, even if they haven't done anything. Wait, I forgot. Duterte is a god and can do no wrong, right? Right. I guess this is why arguing with his most hardened supporters is like arguing with a religious zealot. It's pointless since their trust in Duterte is based on faith and not reason. Well, Filipinos would know a lot about blind faith so it figures.

What if Duterte, as he gets even older, starts going senile and orders the wrong hits? Will anyone stop him? Suppose he dies, who'll be left with the finger on the trigger? Such are the perils of putting your faith in one man rather than an institution.

As to the second premise that only criminals will be killed, there's really no way of knowing with the whole lack of a trial thing. If a person was killed by Duterte's boys, how do we really know he was a criminal? Because they said so? I guess we'll just have to believe them. This is all pretty much a faith-based exercise at this point. Hey, remember the last time in Philippine history when the police and military were given broad and far reaching powers? What a great time that was! The authorities exercised their powers responsibly and there were absolutely no abuses whatsoever. There were definitely no innocent people illegally detained, killed or whisked away to God knows where in the dead of night. Nope, no sir! It's gonna be even better this time around now that we allow them to kill but ONLY the baddies! You see how juvenile this all sounds? You have to have a mind of a child to think roving death squads is the best solution to our problem.

False Options

It should come to no surprise that I'd rather there be due process. I'm a fan of it actually. I'm a fan of being presumed innocent, is that so wrong?

Supporters of Duterte will probably cry that I've never experienced the pain of being victimized by criminals. I have to admit that if a person murdered someone I loved, I'd probably go into such rage and grief. Being human, I would probably want the ones responsible to be killed.

But this isn't about how one feels. It's about society as a whole. This whole law thing with the due process, bill of rights, trial and hearing, evidence and all that? It exists for a reason. When we are ruled by raw emotion, we make mistakes. We gave government the responsibility of settling conflicts so that civil society doesn't descend into anarchy with people slaughtering each other for wrongs, real or imagined. We have trials and all that to make sure there's no screw ups leading to innocent people suffering needlessly.

The thing with Duterte is that he presents a false choice. Since our judicial system is so bad, we should therefore do away with it completely and resort to summary executions. I'm sorry but can I have a third option? Is this a joke? Is there a middle ground somewhere? How about we fix our system instead of scrapping it entirely? Do you burn your whole house to rid it of rats? Ah, fixing our judicial system is too much work, right? Better to just kill people and let God do the work for once.

Call me crazy but I think we should seriously explore how we can fix our judicial system. Of course, this administration won't do anything since they hate the judiciary. PNoy has had it in for the third branch ever since they struck down his Truth Commission and dared to actually (GASP!) disagree with him! None of the other candidates are saying anything about the justice system. Hence, Duterte is winning on this issue since nobody else is addressing it. The judiciary may be important to us mortals but for the politicians of the other two branches, it's an afterthought.

Filipinos are fond of shortcuts. There's an undeniable appeal to the thought of summary executions. Too little thought however, is given to justice and the best way to attain it. Fixing whats ailing with our system won't happen because it takes actual leadership.

Life is Feudal

I mentioned before than I'd support Duterte since he's into federalism. Yes, I support decentralization but I'd rather not have to bargain away my fucking rights for it.

I always assumed that Duterte was actually an intelligent person with a macho facade to fool the dumb masses. The extrajudicial killings, I thought, might just be due to extraordinary circumstances existing in Davao and existing only in that geographical area. Perhaps he was a cerebral Machiavellian type who does what's necessary. However, when Duterte opened his mouth and bragged about his sex life and cursed the Pope, I guess he's not so smart. Don't get me wrong, I'm not that devout, but how wise is it to essentially call the Pope a son of a whore in a nation that is predominantly Roman Catholic? His bragging about his girlfriends and extramarital adventures are negligible, however. It's tastless sure, but the people of this allegedly Catholic country already elected Erap so yeah. I'm beginning to think he's just a vulgar thug who got lucky nobody killed him before he got too powerful.

Sometimes I wish Duterte would talk about issues other than killing but law and order is his biggest card. Can't blame him for playing it.

My Stand

You might think that I'm against Duterte at this point. To be honest, I don't mind if he wins. I've already accepted the fact that our democracy is a sham no matter who wins, the people will lose.

You might think I'm against the idea of summary executions and I am. I, however, concede that there are people who support it and there's nothing wrong with that. People are free to have their own stupid opinions. Perhaps Duterte's greatest asset is Davao itself. There's no greater argument than success. People can elect Duterte if they want. Such is the magic of democracy. Just be careful not to slip on the blood.

A Duterte presidency might be good if he could seriously implement a policy of decentralization. If he wins, it would be fun seeing Philippine society unmasked for what it truly is. The most interesting thing for me however, is seeing the clash of narratives.

On the one hand, you have the human rights crowd who go on and on about due process and morals and all that crap. On the other hand, you have people who have given in to their cynicism so much that they don't mind people being killed and would vote for a monster. I've always wondered which of these points of view were correct. Idealism versus cynicism; a classic.

Always remember that your vote does not matter, it has already been decided and everything is beyond your control.

About Duterte

A lot of people want current Mayor of Davao City, Rodrigo Duterte, to make a run for the presidency. A lot of people too voted for the current clown-in-chief so who cares what "a lot of people" think.

Duterte is an infamous figure. It's always just assumed that he's behind the "Davao Death Squads" that allegedly prowl the streets of his city and summarily execute criminals. He denies personal involvement of course but let's just say that he's "tough on crime", alright?

Vigilante justice is another topic for another time. For now, I think that the people who want Duterte to run for President are naive. The common idea is that Duterte will bring his toughness and brutality to Malacanang and whip this country into shape. The more delusional of his followers think that he'll bring his penchant for vigilantism with him and start rounding up criminals nationwide to be shot.

Let's go over how this might not work:

1. A single city is not the country contrary to what Manila folk like to believe. This applies to Duterte. Duterte may be able to impose his will on a number of people in a limited area but I doubt he can do that on an entire nation of millions, over thousands of islands.

2. He will meet his match. Duterte is the big boss man of Davao because he's entrenched there and nobody has the will to oppose him. Put him in Malacanang and he'll be out of his element. He'll be up against the worst of the worst of Philippine politics; backstabbers, power brokers, murderers and thieves. They won't give two shits about some guy from Davao and will most definitely have the means to retaliate and take care of Duterte if they have to.

3. Duterte is not as well known as his supporters think. People in the South and people connected to Davao know of him. I doubt people in Manila care about places other than Manila. The same goes to the more far flung areas. Duterte even getting close to the number of votes he needs to be a legitimate threat is itself doubtful.

4. No fear factor. Citizens of Davao may fear him but that's the extent of his influence. You can't grip an entire nation in terror by yourself unless you're North Korean.

All of these have to do with his reputation as a strongman. I don't like strongman politics but there is something that I like about Duterte. It's not explored by the media as much as his reputation but Duterte is a federalist. That's something I can agree on.

If he runs on that, I think that's a broader and more appealing message.