Learning to emulate the ways of Duterte

It may have been a small news item in the front page news of The Philippine Star yesterday which blared, "Rody wants to slug rider of noisy motorcycle." But it spoke volumes of the character of our President Rodrigo "Digong" Duterte on what goes on in his mind when he gets disturbed. In this particular instance, the President was attending a wake in Antipolo City, a noisy motorcycle disturbed a press briefing he held at the sidelights.

Let me point out that both the President and this writer are big bikers and yes, because of our big engines on our motorcycles, we have an above average engine noise. But the motorcycle that disturbed the President was a small bike, which the owner customized by removing its silencer so that it can have a little more power. But in doing so, the noise level goes up dramatically it become an ear-splitting, disturbing noise which no one wants to hear.

So the question is, do we have to wait for the Land Transportation Office to issue a directive to penalize motorists that remove the mufflers or silencers of their vehicles? I don't think so! Finally it is time to bring down the noise level of our streets to acceptable levels less we see a President Duterte slug it out with a biker who doesn't even know that his motorcycle is disturbing the entire neighborhood.

Still on the noise issue, I am sure that you folks out there have been disturbed out of your sleep by the noisy "diskoral" that usually happens during a town fiesta or someone's birthday celebration in their respective barangays. This has always been a very frustrating issue in the past wherein more often than not, when you call the police, they can't do anything about it. And worse, a lot of these diskorals get a permit from City Hall and they end up not following the guidelines of their permits.

If there is any positive result in the war versus illegal drugs, it is that Philippine National Police under PNP Chief Ronald "Bato" Dela Rosa is now weeding out the misfit cops who do not deserve to wear that PNP uniform and today, our police are very careful of their job in protecting the citizenry. So when the entire neighborhood is rendered sleepless by a few citizens who turn up the noise level, then it is time to call the cops for help and we hope that this time around, the cops can help stop this noise pollution.

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While the war against illegal drugs will continue to go on even if some Senators try to derail it with a Senate hearing as this is a war that all Filipinos must fight in order to remove this filth from our society. If there is anything that I love about Japan, I am sure they also have a problem of illegal drugs, but it is not in the magnitude that we are having in the Philippines. Our problems of illegal drugs have affected more than three million Filipinos and this means we are literally having and epidemic here and we must help the Duterte administration put the brakes on this phenomenon.

Another problem that has also become epidemic is our problem of corruption which has also affect most levels of the government, thanks to the six-years of propaganda by the Aquino regime which repeated its mantra for daang matuwid, but behind their backs, corruption had worsen! But at least, the Duterte administration is trying to change this ugly image when Secretary Ben Diokno of the Department of Budget and Management issued an order to all government agencies to "get rid" of their luxury vehicles and replace them with ordinary vehicles.

Again this is a very welcome move simply because government officials by their nature are public servant and public servants shouldn't be riding in luxurious vehicles.

Just look at the news when you see the Prime Minister of Israel arrive for a meeting and he alights in a plain and simple vehicle. The same thing is true with the Prime Minister of India. They are leaders by examples. Of course we shouldn't look at "The Beast" the official car of US President Barrack Obama which is a fully armored stretch Cadillac limousine, after all America is the richest and the more powerful nation on earth.

But for us in the Philippines, we really have nothing much to brag about. So we take out hats off to the Duterte administration for making this paradigm shift in the mentality of our government officials, not to be showy but learn the art of humility in riding simple, practical but not luxurious cars which we taxpayers pay for their own comfort.          

Someone on Facebook even suggested that government officials who are assigned vehicles must at least once a week ride on public transportation so they can understand what the rest of the nation has to go through on their daily grind. This isn't a bad idea, which has never been tried, and with Duterte showing to the nation that he is a President who shows to us that he is a leader by example in for instance taking a commercial flight from Manila to Davao and back, then we should emulate his ways.