FRANCISCO S. TATAD

FRANCISCO S. TATAD

“WE left the Philippines after 1986 to escape the Marcos dictatorship,” said the woman in her advancing years. “We came home believing that with Marcos gone, the dictatorship is also gone. But your columns seem to suggest the contrary. Were we wrong? Where did we go wrong?”

The woman was talking to me with evident passion and conviction. But her facts and her timelines were a bit off.

On February 25, 1986, the EDSA civilian-backed military uprising ousted Ferdinand Marcos and installed Mrs. Cory Aquino as revolutionary president. Years before that—on January 17, 1981—Martial Law, which many had equated with dictatorship, while purportedly trying to prevent a communist dictatorship, was lifted. In February that same year, Pope St. John Paul II came to visit and preside over the beatification of the first Filipino martyr St. Lorenzo Ruiz. That seemed to suggest political normality prevailed. The same saintly pope canonized Lorenzo Ruiz at the Vatican in October 1987.

The end of the dictatorship
So, there was no longer any Marcos dictatorship to escape from when this lady and her husband left the Philippines. Cory Aquino was already in charge. She had her own revolutionary government in place. But I did not have the courage to break the poor woman’s heart. I did not have the heart to spoil her fun and ask her what prevented her from discovering any sign of dictatorship in the face of the country on this apparently enjoyable visit?

She has heard, she said, that thousands have been killed in the first year of the President’s murderous war on drugs without documentation or due process, and that the police have been given generous bounty money for every suspect killed. But what have these to do with dictatorship?

She has heard that nearly all the congressmen had switched political parties after the last election in order to follow the President into his borrowed PDP-Laban “volkswagen” at the cost of the separation of powers and the doctrine of checks and balances. Doesn’t this simply show the kind of cheap political opportunists we have in Congress and in local government? What has dictatorship got to do with it?

She has heard that the President’s Congress allies had thrown out an impeachment complaint against their chief without so much as a hearing, for alleged lack of merit, and yet, at his instance, they are pursuing a hardly credible impeachment complaint against the Supreme Court Chief Justice. Again, what has dictatorship got to do with it? Does this not refer strictly to the relationship between the Supreme Court and Congress?

She has also heard that the previous administration had asked the permanent arbitration court at the Hague to arbitrate the maritime dispute between the Philippines and China in the Spratlys and that the court has ruled in favor of the Philippines, but that DU30 decided not to invoke this ruling in dealing with the Chinese. Doesn’t this merely show that DU30, who got billions of dollars in loans and pledged assistance from the Chinese, is a smarter businessman than all his critics? What has dictatorship got to do with it?

She has also heard that where Marcos declared martial law in 1972 to prevent the communists from taking over the government, DU30 has appointed communists to his Cabinet without the benefit of a peace agreement, and later declared the resumption of armed hostilities against the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army, without getting rid of his communist appointees, the most important of whom remains vice chairman of the National Democratic Front. Doesn’t this merely show DU30’s more clever than everybody else? What has dictatorship got to do with it?

How lucky these guys
For this balikbayan, Rody Duterte is a strong and wily President, as strong and wily as America’s Donald Trump, whom the London Economist has called an “insurgent in the White House.” She believes the Philippines is lucky to have him as our President, almost as lucky as the United States is to have Trump. But he is no dictator at all.

By dictator, we mean someone like Nero, Diocletian, Caligula, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-Il, Robert Mugabe, and a few others. In ancient Rome, the term “dictator” did not always have a pejorative connotation. The oft-cited story of Cincinnatus is the classical example. He was called from the plow and assumed the role of a dictator at a time of trouble and then returned to the plow when the trouble was over. We are not talking of a modern Cincinnatus here.

If DU30 were a dictator, the lady pointed out, he would not have tolerated any kind of criticism, printed or spoken, from anyone. He would have also banned all the saccharine and sickening praises being heaped upon him by his sycophants in Congress and in the press. In Marcos’ time, the Secretary of Information once asked the newspapers for a moratorium on columns that showered “incompetent and favor-seeking praise” upon the President, without any provocation.

Protect Honeylet and Bong
If DU30 were a dictator, he would have silenced all those who had reported seeing Ms Honeylet Avanceña in Spain, traveling with an entourage much bigger than that which used to follow Mrs.Marcos in her international travels, at the height of her popularity and power. These reports serve to undermine any credibility DU30 may have gained from firing or threatening to fire government officials who have traveled beyond a few miles from their respective residences, without express presidential consent.

If he were a dictator, he would have found a special place of contemplation for his special assistant Christopher “Bong” Go for having become, in the President’s own words, a “billionaire” without any credible explanation for it. Or DU30 could have provided the explanation himself, on behalf of this rising candidate for the Forbes annual listing of billionaires.

If DU30 were a dictator, he would have closed down any site that carried photos of himself, taken in Marawi in August of last year, which showed him, as President and Commander in Chief, handling a powerful sniper rifle inside a gunman’s nest. These appear to have generated stories about a “sniper president” who had made so many kills during that visit.

These apparently boosted the morale of the troops during the liberation of Marawi from the IS-related Mautes. But they have also given some of his critics reason to suggest that “killing”—as in the extrajudicial drug killings—has become one of his real “therapies.” If DU30 were a dictator he would have penalized any gossip-mongering like this.

Inside the torture chamber
Finally, if DU30 were a dictator, he would have ordered House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez taken to the Tower of London, as it were, for all the execrable offenses he has committed against the Constitution, simple good manners, the rule of reason and common sense. We would have been honored with a royal execution.

But none of these things have happened or are happening. To the contrary, DU30 has succeeded in silencing most of the critics of his drug killings; in the last Asean summits held in Manila last year, none of the 19 heads of state and government who came, except for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, raised any questions on the subject, and no one came to Trudeau’s defense when DU30 attacked him.

No one asks any questions about DU30’s physical or mental health anymore, not because nobody cares anymore whether he goes to the cancer hospital in Guangzhou, to Cardinal Santos Medical Center at Greenhills or to Dr. Farrah Bunch’s natural medical clinic in Tarlac, but either because he has become so “popular” as the propaganda fraudsters like to tell us, or because he has succeeded in terrifying everyone.

After the Securities and Exchange Commission decided to revoke the license of Rappler, the independent online news platform, for allegedly violating the 100 percent Filipino nationality requirement of the Constitution, I expected the big media organizations in the country to express some token concern at least about the future of press freedom. None came. What I heard instead was an obsequious moan from the National Press Club saying the silencing of Rappler did not threaten anybody else.

Praising what we fear
After the entire country has been terrorized with the daily message of “kill, kill, kill,” no individual newspaper or journalist can complain they are being singled out. But no one has a right to believe they will be spared. DU30’s statement, “I’m going to kill you” affects not only specific drug suspects to whom it is directed, but everyone else who hears it and sees the victims being slaughtered like animals.

Thus, it has become so much more fashionable to try to praise the most unpraiseworthy thing and to proclaim as most popular the most fearsome of all our politicians.

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KUDOS. Justice Manuel ‘Lolong’ Lazaro, Chairman of the Philippine Constitution Association (Philconsa), turned 83 yesterday and was feted by family and friends at Okada Manila, Entertainment City, of which he is the new chairman. Many are looking forward to seeing Lolong lead Philconsa in taking a sober and dignified stand on the proposed constitutional change that has so far divided the nation. Happy birthday, Lolong, may Philconsa under your leadership be wiser than ever!

*Yuming Chin, Executive Director of Viventis, the executive search firm that’s leading the transformation in the recruitment industry, turns 55 today. Yuming, a Malaysian-born citizen, has made the Philippines his home, and has built a successful and innovative career impacting the entire economy. He is a game-changer in an ever-changing industry. Congratulations and Happy Birthday, Yuming!

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COURTESY:
THE MANILA TIMES
BY FRANCISCO TATAD
ON

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