Duterte the political rock star

The most interesting and perhaps also the most meaningful election related development in recent weeks is Davao’s Rodrigo Duterte. No other politician can do what he did and still have people begging for more.

The fact that Duterte is not running for president is not really the story. Somehow, the story is Rody Duterte himself and why he gained political rock star status that all politicians can only look at in envy.

I am not sure if we were just following a pre-determined storyline of a real life teleserye. But Duterte had always been emphatic he is not running for president. Yet people just kept on hoping and made a parlor game out of guessing from his statements and body language, if Duterte will change his mind.

He didn’t change his mind. Yet he is being accused of playing with his public’s emotions with a scripted Duterteserye.

At a time when other politicians have to pay people to rally for them, pretty good sized crowds freely gathered for Duterte at various instances in the last two months urging him to run. The climax was last Friday when social media was once again full of hope that Duterte had been convinced to run.

His daughter, Sara, posted what looked like a COC showing she is running for mayor. Duterte once hinted he may run for president if his daughter did that. The once mayor Sara also had her head shaved and posted tweets urging supporters to do the same to make her father run.

Then there were tweets and Facebook posts saying Duterte was on a private plane to Manila. The impression left was that he was going to beat the deadline and file his COC for president. He didn’t. Maybe he got caught in NAIA or EDSA traffic, but he didn’t file his COC for president.

No living politician, not even Miriam, could do what Duterte did. Keeping people in suspense the way a telenovela writer would do it is much too dangerous for ordinary politicians. Maybe Duterte was having fun and what better way to end a political career than being able to tell your grandchildren I could have been president if I wanted to.

How did Duterte become such a rock star? A simple answer would be, by doing his job. A mayor or a president for that matter is only valuable to the people if he is able to deliver things they need most. Leaders must deliver peace and order. The social compact came to be because otherwise life would be nasty, brutish and short. And Duterte delivered.

It doesn’t come out as clearly in the usual surveys, but I think peace and order is foremost in people’s minds these days. When even the home is no longer safe from common criminals, people look to government for protection. And they are frustrated that even the police are often on the wrong side of the law.

I don’t know if Duterte has actually shot a criminal in cold blood as is his reputation, but the fact that criminals are afraid of him is good enough to make Davao the safest city in the country.

Duterte also comes across as the pragmatic leader who will seek out and compromise with the communists and the moro rebels. As a result, Davao City is now something like an open city that is spared the violence of their rebellions.

And Duterte is not your typical provincial mayor. He and his daughter Sara have implemented a digital governance system in Davao using IBM’s latest state of the art Smart Cities program. How come not a single mayor in Metro Manila has done something like it?

It also helps Duterte that in his many years as mayor, he has not been accused of corruption. Very few politicians who have served as long as he has can say that.

Whether Duterte can scale up what he has done in Davao to cover the entire country is the big question. But people are not even thinking of that. They want to believe the action-oriented Duterte is the answer to their prayers for a government official who will respond quickly to provide relief to their everyday problems.

There is also something about Duterte’s tough love approach that attracts people. After hearing all those stories about Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, there are enough people who feel we need some amount of discipline too. Duterte can make that happen. Rightly or wrongly, Duterte is our modern Heneral Luna.

The only other person I can think of who can impose discipline within democratic parameters is Dick Gordon and he is not running for president. He would have wanted to but he doesn’t have the financial clout to seek the highest office.

How do we explain the Duterte phenomenon? Simply, people are tired of the chaos, tired of the corruption, tired of officials sleeping on the job and tired of living in fear of criminals and power mad public officials. Duterte is their knight in shining armor. All the other leading presidential hopefuls are sissies compared to Duterte.

I don’t like it that people seem to be looking for a messiah of some sort who will sort out all our problems and make things right as if by magic. That makes us ripe for an ambitious military officer or a charismatic politician who will take the reins of power and like the old dictator Marcos, claim he is doing it for our own good.

The next president will not have all the time to show people our democratic system can be saved. Our day of reckoning is probably near.

If it is Mar, his track record says nothing much will happen, good or bad… continuity as he puts it. If it is Grace, she has no track record we can look at. If it is Binay, we will have to worry about how much leakage our national treasury will suffer... Makati pa lang yun! He is also the perfect justification in the storyline of a potential dictator who will say he did it because the president was too corrupt for the country.

In a sense, the election in May 2016 may be irrelevant. We will continue to look for another Duterte because none of those who may be elected president satisfies the need we desperately feel. Let us just hope that whoever the new Duterte is will not take advantage of this public desperation to grab power with the wrong motives. But we will never know until it is too late. 

Daang Matuwid 

I received this e-mail from a reader, Eric Cantuba.

Hi Mr. Boo - long time reader, first time sender here.

 I travel a lot around the country and I always look forward to bumping to any of our Cabinet officials on the plane – not to strangle them (sana!), but to quiz them and try to peek into their minds on how they feel about certain pressing issues hounding the country.

On a recent trip from Davao to Manila, I bumped into Sec. Procy Alcala. I asked him if he is seriously considering running for the Senate in the coming election. He just grinned back at me. So I said to myself baka tatakbo. Sa loob ko rin sabi ko sana wag manalo. Kawawa naman ang mga magsasaka.

 I asked him if he can relay my message to Sec. Jun Abaya since they are both in P-Noy’s circle of friends. He said he has a direct line to Sec. Jun while brandishing his phone.

So I told Mr. Alcala na baka pwede namang ayusin ng DOTC yung traffic management sa NAIA runway. Our flight had already been delayed for two hours. Sec. Procy just shrugged his shoulder like it is not a big deal. Maybe is it because he is not at all affected by it? Or talagang manhid lang sila?

He continued by saying “ganito din naman katraffic sa ibang bansa” – then he went into motion na parang may tatawagan sa telepono.  I was saddened and totally felt our government officials are so disconnected with the common tao. Kanya kanya na lang talaga.

I long for the days na yun mga officials natin have their hearts set for the common tao.  Kaya gustong gusto ko pag ang mga government officials natin ay with the common Filipino kasi pwede namin silang kausapin, lapitan at tanungin directly. 

But Sec Procy is totally disconnected and I no longer wonder why Mr Abaya, or any personality within P-Noy’s inner circle are just going through the motions na busy sila.  I feel bad about the state of our country lalo na sa mga kamay ng kagaya nila.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco