Duterte and the Die Hards

There are enemies of President Duterte who are just plain enemies. There are also enemies of his that he loves to hate. There are even enemies that he loves to hate more than the others he hates. To these enemies he loves to hate more than the others he hates, he reserves the most ominous and chilling of threats. I will kill you. P... i… I will really kill you, he would often hiss through teeth clenched in anger.

Some of these enemies also want to kill Duterte. Or at least want to see him dead. Some of these enemies want to see him dead so much they have already figured out what diseases he is going to die of. There are even those who cannot wait for disease to kill him. They want the Supreme Court to just declare him apparently dying already.

But Duterte is not afraid of death, or at least claims not to be. He talks about plummeting to his death in a fiery plane crash, or of just keeling over one day for no apparent reason. It is as if he is trying to play psychology with God, whom he does not seem to believe in anymore in the traditional way of believing he was brought up in. And maybe God is in fact humoring him, in ways not funny to those waiting to see him dead.

At the Senate, one senator has been killed on social media, until he resurrected himself, also on social media. Senator Bong Revilla posted on FB that he was alive and well and kicking. For someone who resurrected himself, his coming out statement certainly lacked the humor, the finesse and the plain ooompf of a Mark Twain, who said reports of his demise have been greatly exaggerated, when an obit of his was erroneously published.

A man with lesser twinkle and stars, a certain Efren Aguilar, had a more official, and thus more terrifying, brush with death. On official records at the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation or PhilHealth, Mr. Aguilar has been dead for four years. Not only was he dead on paper but when he went to submit himself as proof of life, he was told to his face, "you are dead, sir."

PhilHealth, by the way, is the very same agency where documents show thousands of members to be more than 100 years old, many of them even "still alive" as bona fide members at 130 years old. There must be something miraculous and divine going on at PhilHealth for it to have the power to dispense life or death.

Or maybe it has something to do with this administration, whose officials do not seem to give up on life very easily. In fact I can name at least three who are now practically on their third lives, after having tested positive for the coronavirus twice. Senators Migs Zubiri and Ed Angara, as well as Interior Secretary Eduardo Ano, have all tested positive for the virus not once but twice.

Even Leonor Briones, the education secretary, who at 79 does not want to be left behind, has kicked the virus. The vulnerable sector lady not only survived testing positive, she tested positive while being asymptomatic. Can you believe that? A 79-year-old testing positive for COVID with nary a sniffle or even a wheeze? And Duterte is just 75 and a member of PhilHealth in perpetual isolation. Looks like 2022 has gotten too far all of a sudden.