Is President Duterte a failure?

In the last few days, the words that became the topic of most discussions whether at home or in limited social gatherings were “Duterte palpak”. Observers claimed that those words coined in the most confidential recesses of the government-owned and -controlled television --PTV. In other words, top management presumably gave the imprimatur for its airing. A Duterte unbeliever in me does not find it difficult to imagine that the most brilliant propaganda minds in government employ thoroughly discussed the issue before they came up with linguistic bomb - Duterte palpak. Who would ever doubt that together with the technical experts handling a maze of technological gadgetry and working in the government TV network, these propagandists succeeded to flash on television screens the words Duterte palpak as their collective rebuke of the way the president has mishandled the affairs of the government.

 I have 50/50 blood in my veins. I am 50% Boholano and 50% Leyteño (Ha ha ha, got you!). Being 100% Bisaya, I speak no Tagalog. Palpak, I believe, is the Tagalog word for the Bisaya “sipyat” or “sayop”. For those who look for the English equivalent of these words, I dare to offer the word failure. So, if the PTV message were Anglicized, it should read Duterte, a failure. But candidly, do the government men running the government-owned television network want to tell the Filipinos that the presidency of Duterte is a failure? If that indeed is their altruistic message, then I beg to differ. Contrary to what was reportedly shown (because I did not see it myself) on PTV, Duterte is not palpak.

1.) The numbers tell us. The three neighboring ASEAN countries are Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. The populations of these neighbors are Indonesia, 275 million; Malaysia, 32 million; and the Philippines, 110 million. The total number of COVID cases in Indonesia is 1,450,000. The Philippines only has 646,000. If we base on these numbers, we can say that Indonesian Widodo (not Duterte) is a failure. Malaysia, on the other hand, recorded only 340,000 COVID-19 cases which is about one half the Philippine cases. But, there are just a little over one-third Malaysians compared to the number of Filipinos. Again, using this comparative basis, I can tell the PTV people responsible for the disparaging words that Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin (not Duterte) is a failure.

2.) We all know that the Philippines is the last country in the ASEAN nations to have its citizenry inoculated with anti-COVID 19 vaccine. This record is nothing President Duterte can be proud of. There is leadership ineptness written all over this dangerous delay of vaccination. Lives have been exponentially risked each minute of delayed inoculation. But, we can now see that President Duterte was deliberate in his action. He made sure that the vaccine produced by Communist China would land in the Philippines ahead of such American/European competitions as Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

When Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Manuel Romualdez and Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. decried that “someone dropped the ball”, a euphemism used to describe that a high government official scuttled the early importation of a vaccine against the coronavirus, I felt sad that a vaccination program would be pushed back. The purchase of Pfizer vaccine was “dropped”. I earlier perceived it as negligence on the part of our health officials not to do everything to bring the vaccine. But when I pieced together subsequent news reports, I realized that the “dropping of the ball” was deliberate in order to give time for the Red Chinese Sinovac to secure the Emergency Use Authority. The pronouncements of President Duterte endorsing Sinovac were very clear. In fact, when it was reported that there was an oversight in the signing of the indemnity agreement causing more delay in the importation of the Pfizer vaccine, I knew that it was part of the scheme. So Duterte (is not) palpak in bringing to our shores the Sinovac ahead of other vaccine brands.

In fine, I expect that the PTV people responsible for the Duterte palpak plug be dismissed from service in the same ferocity as it government pursued Chief Justice Sereno and Sen. Leila de Lima.