Hubris

A week before Filipinos pick his successor, President Duterte has admitted that he overpromised during his 2016 campaign.

He attributed this to “hubris” – an arrogant overconfidence that he could deliver on his most striking promise, which is to eliminate the drug menace within six months of assuming power.

Six years later, he hasn’t used the word “failure,” but that’s exactly what became of his promise to stamp out the drug scourge in record time, using methods that he employed in his home city of Davao. The drug menace hasn’t been eliminated even in his city either.

And the reason is more complicated than his explanation, that even local government and police officials are involved in the illegal drug trade.

Duterte did deliver on one aspect of his infamous campaign promise: his warning to drug dealers that “if you f*** with my country, I will kill you!”

Voters clearly liked the promise to kill – with Rodrigo Duterte, we all knew it was no empty threat – and gave him a landslide victory.

Over 6,000 drug killings admitted by the police at least show that he’s a man of his word.

He recently vowed to continue killing drug personalities when his term is over; in what capacity is unclear. Perhaps this will happen in Davao City, where his children are expected to retain control of the local government.

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In the twilight of his term, the war on drugs seems to remain top of mind for President Duterte. He harps on it at every opportunity. Is he worried about lawsuits or the International Criminal Court when he loses his presidential immunity?

The elimination of the drug problem is not the only campaign promise left unfulfilled. There’s also the sweeping promise to end contractualization or “end of contract” employment schemes. Stopping “endo” was problematic from the start, considering the labor requirements of various industries and the economy.

Nuancing of the promise would have helped, limiting it to ending abuses and excesses of labor contracting. But even such practices have not been eliminated by Duterte’s “don’t f*** with me” presidency.

And remember that campaign promise to ride a jet ski to the Spratlys and plant a Philippine flag on one of the islands? Instead our fishing boats were rammed by vessels bearing the Chinese flag in the West Philippine Sea. Panganiban (Mischief) Reef off Palawan is now a military base with an airstrip.

We were so servile to Beijing, so worried about offending Uncle Xi, that we rolled out the red carpet for the early entry of COVID, courtesy of two Chinese tourists direct from its place of origin, Wuhan City. Then we employed China’s zero-COVID policy of widespread crippling lockdowns, minus that country’s enormous resources for mass testing and blanket contact tracing.

When the US under Duterte’s buddy Donald Trump offered to give the Philippines priority in access to prized vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech, with 10 million doses to be delivered in January 2021, Duterte’s preference for China-made Sinovac or Sinopharm jabs scuttled the US deal. The January delivery could have reduced the critical infections and deaths in the first Alpha-driven killer surge that began in March last year.

Duterte’s immense popularity also couldn’t get his pet advocacy, federalism, off the ground. Charter change, even if initiated early in his term, fizzled out.

As for eliminating red tape, another campaign promise, we can cut the administration some slack because of two years of COVID. But Duterte’s own Anti-Red Tape Authority has numerous stories of persistent red tape in various agencies, before and during the pandemic.

Duterte did battle certain oligarchs, but created or greatly strengthened his own.

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Being his most controversial campaign promise, the six-month timetable for eliminating the drug problem is the most indelible in the national memory.

His own admission of hubris in making the promise should remind the people, a week before election day, to carefully assess not only the promises of aspirants both for national and local posts, but also their capability to deliver on the promise.

Duterte is unique in his admission of hubris in making his (failed) campaign promise. I don’t remember any other candidate making a similar admission.

He also has several solid achievements: the peace deal with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, public works infrastructure, tax reform, smoking ban in public places (he still has time to veto the vape bill), universal public health care (but gradual rollout due to funding problems), free public education from kindergarten to college, Boracay’s cleanup.

But he also institutionalized opaqueness in governance as well as state manipulation and control of information. Crony capitalism is alive and well. Cussing and crudeness became fixtures on primetime TV. Dynasty building has achieved shameless proportions.

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You wonder if we will ever reach the stage of development wherein a lawmaker will resign after being caught watching porn twice on his cell phone in the halls of Congress, as British Conservative Party Member of Parliament Neil Parish did last week.

In our country, an official of the Commission on Elections is accused of being influenced by a married lover in the Senate over a critical issue, and what happens? A big, fat nothing, except a lot of open ribbing and wink-winks at the Senate, according to some accounts.

A guy is caught on video gambling in the high-stakes VIP pit of a casino, and openly admits that he is keeping four families, and what happens? The guy suspected of leaking the video disappears, never to be heard from to this day. And the VIP gambler is elected president, by a landslide.

Resigned MP Parish attributed his porn-watching to “a moment of madness.” We have many moments of worse madness in this country.

Our democratic institutions are shot, and we look eagerly poised to leap from the frying pan into the fire come election day.

And this time, an admission of hubris after six years is doubtful. The frontrunner is not the type who admits anything.