The government as a disruptor of the status quo
The Duterte government is an activist administration. It demolishes traditions and breaks barriers.
Most governments are defenders and upholders of the status quo. Not this government. The administration of President Rody Duterte has questioned the establishments, has stood up to the big bullies of the status quo, has chosen to go out of the comfort zones, and has opted to do the unthinkable, to dare to try things that have not been done by any other president before. This government has purposely exceeded the bounds that have been established by many precedents. It does not pay homage to the old ways of doing things. It has chosen to venture into territories that were not even tried by previous governments.
This government has declared war against drugs, and the war is still raging. No other president from Aguinaldo and Quezon up to GMA and PNoy has ever focused on this social cancer that has destroyed millions of lives and properties, and still continues to put the nation under grave and imminent danger of total disintegration. There are many so-called human rights activists who are fixated on defending the comfort zones of drug addicts, drug pushers, and drug lords. President Duterte's administration is out to disrupt such a misguided hierarchy of values. Those who shed tears for drug couriers and drug syndicates are men and women are often oblivious to the agonies of victims who had been raped, murdered, led to suicide, and crimes by those purveyors of satanic substances. Duterte's government is out to disrupt them.
The Duterte administration has decided to clean up the environment, defend the natural habitat from the greed of men, and opts to disrupt the decades of neglect, negligence, and ineptitude of public officials tasked to safeguard our national patrimony and natural resources. For many decades, businessmen and their underlings had been ravishing our forests through illegal logging and illegitimate mining activities. They throw away their noxious chemicals into our rivers, canals, lakes, and shores, thus killing marine life and destroying the livelihoods of subsistence fishermen and marginal farmers. The Duterte government has fought them, disrupted them, and imposed on them harsh penalties, including suspension of their operations, stoppage of their activities and closures of companies.
President Duterte has dismissed corrupt and lazy, incompetent misfits in public service. He looked into the excessive allowances and perks of non-performing government-owned and controlled corporations. He ordered the investigation and filing of charges of abusive and thieving public officials whether career or political appointees. But, on the other hand, he increased the salaries of police officers and men, as well as the men and women in the armed forces. He is poised to raise the salaries of teachers and education officials. He allowed free tuition for college students in state universities and colleges. He also allowed free water for the irrigation of farmlands. He accelerated the distribution of land titles to agrarian reform beneficiaries. He ordered that passports should last for ten years, and drivers' licenses for five years.
President Duterte is a provinciano and he disrupts the centralized “dictatorship” of Imperial Manila. He ordered powers and public services devolved, and he pushed and succeeded in the Bangsamoro Law, which gives wider autonomy to Muslim people to govern themselves with the least interference from the central government. Indeed, this government is a disruptor of centuries of oppression of the south by the north, of the poor by the rich and powerful people.
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