Red October? More like Red Herring

As if it was not enough to foist the sophistry of its legal moves to put Senator Antonio Trillanes behind bars, the Duterte administration came up with another distraction from the more pressing need to address soaring inflation.

This so-called “Red October,” an alleged plot against the president by various opposition groups with armed elements, is more like a red herring. A red herring is a fallacy of relevance likened to a tactic of bringing in a pungent fish cured in brine and smoke in order to throw a sniffing dog off its trail.

The administration’s recent statements sum up like this: “We are not mainly to blame for soaring inflation, and there is no truth to allegations of high-level corruption and incompetence under our watch. In fact, you have to support us because there is a plot to oust us from power, and you don’t want our problems to worsen, do you?” As with most red herrings, the second sentence seems plausible but ultimately irrelevant and diversionary.  The diversionary tactic becomes obvious when you factor in the historical equation. Almost all presidents in the history of our country have become targets of ouster moves or naughty wishes that their terms will be cut short. But the question is, how credible can an ouster plot be? Or, how likely is it that the dark wish will come true?

A report by SWS on the net satisfaction ratings of presidents from May 1986 to June 2018 shows that President Duterte’s ratings today are more or less the same as that of former president Noynoy Aquino during the same period of the latter’s administration.

Former president Joseph Estrada’s net satisfaction ratings during the second year of his presidency were worse than that of Aquino and Duterte. So were former president Gloria Arroyo’s ratings, which on the average barely even reached Aquino and Duterte’s lowest levels.

Duterte’s approval rating recently suffered a huge 13-point drop in a survey done by Pulse Asia early this month, from 88 percent to 75 percent. That’s still high, but what makes the slump in Duterte’s current ratings more telling is the scale of his failure to deliver on his ambitious campaign promises and the wearing down of his larger-than-life potential as a leader.

In marketing parlance, the president overpromised and underdelivered. And in this country, overpromising and underdelivering are not mortal sins. They are not fatal to a presidency. No president in the history of the Philippines has ever been ousted because he or she was a huge disappointment. We are that immensely forbearing as a people.

Ferdinand Marcos was ousted because he overstayed his mandate and was widely believed to have cheated in the 1986 snap president election. His politics of cronyism and patronage also weakened key institutions and fractured an otherwise professional military.  Estrada’s ouster in 2001, while backed by popular protests, was more of a bumbling case of his government ceasing effectively to function. This was after a series of facepalm decisions and indecisions by his own advisers and allies, and by the president himself.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque’s statement this week about “power hungry destabilizers out to grab power from a duly elected leader enjoying overwhelming support of the people,” sounded like a hypocritical diatribe of a presidential underling enjoying the spoils of power but with no remarkable results to show for it.

There are many of that kind of officials in the Duterte administration, including those assigned here in Cebu and the president’s so-called “allies” here. They ride on the coattails of the president’s popularity and the presidency’s inherent prestige. Some are banking on their past campaign contributions while others, just their ability to boost the ego of their new boss and powerful ally.

These are the kind of people the president can afford to let go of in favor of more competent people who are not afraid to tell a conceited leader the real score. Which reminds me this saying: “I was so busy keeping my job I forgot to do my job.”

The president’s job is not to fend off so-called plots to oust him from office. An ouster plot against a poorly performing administration does not have the remotest chance of success in this forbearing country.

The president’s job is to appoint good, trusted, and competent people in government who can help him achieve his goals for the Filipino people.