Pres. Rodrigo Duterte: A year after

It’s been a year since Pres. Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte took the helm at the Malacañang Palace and took the nation for a political rollercoaster ride and what a ride it has been. In an era where the sore losers of the political opposition has literally gone berserk throwing everything they can throw at the Duterte administration  including the kitchen sink, using everything they have learned from the six years of the presidency of Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino from the Goebbels type of propaganda, fake news to the creation of the Yellowtard trolls, including its links to the human rights organizations here and abroad to discredit anything and everything that comes out of the mouth of Pres. Duterte, I’d say that the President survived all these things! His promise to usher change has really changed the nation!

Sure, there are still many things that Pres. Duterte promised during the election campaign that he has yet to deliver and the biggest one is that shift from our current unitary and into a federal form of governance, which he told me during the campaign would kick off six months into his presidency. However there are just too many stumbling blocks that keep the President’s focus away from the plans to establish a Federal Philippines.

For instance, Pres. Duterte is hell-bent in establishing peace with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the National Democratic Front (NDF) and the New People’s Army (NPA), but every now and then, the peace talks are interrupted by the numerous attacks done by the NPA in many parts of the country. It is clear to me that the old CPP foggies talking with the Philippine Government Peace Panel, Labor Sec. Silvestre Bello and Sec. Jess Dureza could no longer control the armed cadres fighting in the countryside. I fear that even if the CPP/NDF/NPA really sign a peace deal with the Philippine government, we will not see peace reign in the countryside.

At this point, I would like to believe that it is high time that Pres. Duterte clearly make a definitive stand against these uncalled for attacks by the NPA… to stop these attacks or stop talking peace with the Reds because clearly, they don’t want peace in this country.

Sure, traffic in Metro Manila is still a headache, this time of Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chairman Danilo Lim. But honestly, I don’t expect that the traffic problem that did not happen to our streets overnight could be solved in just one year. As far as the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) is concerned, this problem too was borne out of the neglect and corruption of the previous MRT management and this problem too needs more than a year to analyze what went wrong in order to fix it.

Finally the most unexpected incident to happen during Pres. Duterte’s first year in office is the Maute terror attack in Marawi City. Since this crisis surfaced last May 23, Pres. Duterte had to cancel his trip to Russia, declare Martial Law in Mindanao and focused with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to rid Marawi City of this ISIS-inspired Maute terrorists. That we saw Pres. Duterte flying from place to place, visiting the wounded soldiers, going on wakes of those who were killed in action and sympathizing with their bereaved families also took its toll on the President’s health, which is why he was out of the headlines for four days to rest.

While the Marawi crisis is winding down, one reality seems to have surfaced when early in this campaign Pres. Duterte told his soldiers that he did not want any prisoners. But the latest from Marawi is that the Maute terror group wants to swap the still alive Marawi Vicar General, Fr. Teresito “Chito” Suganob with the captured Maute parents, Cayamora and his second wife and Farhana Maute. At least the Duterte government has already issued its declaration… no negotiations with the Maute terror group.

Finally, a huge plus factor for the one-year anniversary of Pres. Duterte is his administration’s plan for the Golden Age of Infrastructure. For us in Cebu
this means after six years of starvation on infra projects, this is the most welcome news and we
expect a lot of construction activities next year. Sure traffic would suffer during the construction period, but this is the bitter medicine we have to take so life would be better in the future!

*     *      *

When I wrote last week’s article on the BBC Hard Talk interview by Stephen Sackur with Sen. Antonio Trillanes, we praised the BBC for its unbiased interview and chastised Cable Network News (CNN) for its obvious political bias. Lo and behold, we read in the news that CNN accepted the resignations last Monday of three journalists involved in a retracted story about a supposed investigation into a pre-inaugural meeting between an associate of Pres. Donald Trump and the head of a Russian investment fund. The fake story was posted on the network’s website on Thursday and was removed, with all links disabled, Friday night. CNN is fast losing its credibility!

*     *      *

Email: [email protected] or [email protected].