PRRD must put the bite back with the bark
It is not the VFA and the ABS-CBN issues that bother me. While both may seem contentious, they only are from the political point of view. Most of the level-headed participants in the ongoing debate all agree that, one, it is probably time to get out of a marriage where the Philippines has always been treated as a second-class partner to the US and, two, the press is not immune from liability and that loss of jobs is no excuse for accountability.
No matter how contentious the two issues are, the political enemies of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte will never be able to muster enough clout, credibility and momentum to try and oust him before the end of his term and thus potentially plunge this country into chaos. They may be able to mount a better challenge to Duterte's anointed successor in 2022 but that's it. Any change of horses will be on the shore, not in midstream.
What does bother me enough to be scared is the palpable slack in Duterte's vaunted fight against illegal drugs and corruption. People have always pointed to Duterte's immense popularity, conveniently forgetting that the probinsyano was not born with it. Duterte earned his popularity because of the hard-fisted manner with which he chose to fight these twin scourges.
Take the matter of EJK or extrajudicial killings, for example. Duterte has been publicly demonized on account of the tremendous toll his bloody war on illegal drugs has taken. And yet, in survey after survey, where the names of respondents are kept private, the numbers of Duterte just keep getting higher, proving that the majority of Filipinos actually approve of his tactics, so long as they remain nameless to their priests and bishops.
But lately there seems to have been a noticeable slack in Duterte's resolve to pursue those from whom whiffs of suspicion of involvement in illegal drugs have wafted to spoil the once sweet-smelling air of political will. Duterte seems to push back when the accusing finger points to one of the boys. Tolerance and condonation are always the first chinks that eventually break apart any once invincible armor.
Corruption, too, has started to squirt through cracks in the dam. Maybe corruption was actually too sweeping and pervasive that not even a Duterte can truly stamp it out in just a single political lifetime. Still. I do not think it is the sheer scope of corruption that is dooming Duterte's valiant fight against it because corruption actually dropped to a trickle when Duterte's rant was still loud enough to rattle the bones of any government functionary.
But now corruption is not only back, because it probably never went away, it is once again on public display, which is to say, with audacity. And when the crooks start to put their crookedness on display, that means the scary element that used to be so effective with Duterte's way may no longer be there. Maybe the loss has something to do with credibility.
But all is not lost for Duterte. Far from it. In fact, I think the old fart from Davao is an extremely lucky man. All the chinks that have started to emerge in his armor emerged at a time when he is still far from being a lame duck president. It is just 2020. He still has two years to his term. He is still pretty much in the saddle. If he wants to recover the slack, he can still do it and not mind his back. He needs to put the bite back together with the bark.
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