Two years

A third of President Duterte’s six-year term ended over the weekend.

Of the 10-point socio-economic agenda laid out at the start of his term, he has delivered on several: maintenance of macroeconomic policies of his predecessor, enactment of laws on ease of doing business and enhanced competitiveness, expansion of the conditional cash transfer program, increased public spending for infrastructure, and the tax reform package.

Several of the items on the 10-point agenda are continuing programs. One – the full implementation of the reproductive health law – is in limbo.

The tax reform package delivers on the promise to cut income taxes, but any gains in take-home pay are negated by the hefty excise tax on fuel, which (despite denials by Duterte’s economic team) has made consumer prices soar.

Duterte is starting his third year in power with price surges on people’s mind, the peso at its weakest in a long while, and employers cutting jobs because of new rules on contracting.

Also on his plate are the insults he has heaped on God and Christian teachings, the roundup of loiterers or tambays (now finessed to city ordinance violators), and that fixture of his presidency, although now with substantially fewer victims – drug-related killings.

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In the two years under his watch, the country has maintained its investment grade and business confidence generally remains high. Prospects are bright for a peace agreement in the near future with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The prospects are dimmer at this point for the peace process with communist rebels, but this has happened before and Duterte has always revived the initiative.

Despite the gains in his first two years, attention inevitably has been overwhelmingly focused on the most unusual feature of his presidency: the killings related to his brutal war on illegal drugs, with even the official death toll higher than all the extrajudicial killings attributed to Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship.

Marcos – specifically, his burial at the heroes’ cemetery – is another indelible feature of the first two years of the Duterte administration.

Both Marcos’ burial and the drug killings were promised by candidate Duterte during the 2016 campaign.

What he didn’t promise was his pivot to China – another remarkable aspect of his first two years in power. In fact he has reneged on his promise, declared publicly on two separate occasions in April 2016 – to jet-ski to the Spratlys carrying a Philippine flag, which he would plant on one of China’s artificial islands. If the Chinese obliterated him with a missile, well heck, the candidate said he’d always dreamed of becoming a hero.

So far he has failed to persuade his security forces to go along with his China pivot. And if one opposition senator has A-1 intel, there are security forces who resent the insinuation of cowardice whenever the commander-in-chief implies that they aren’t prepared to go to war in defense of Philippine sovereignty.

Apart from the war on drugs, candidate Duterte also promised to wage war on corruption. He has fired several of his officials, including long-time friends, on allegations of wrongdoing. But his campaign has been weakened by his recycling of the sacked officials.

Arbitrariness is seen to reign – from the unprecedented shutdown of Boracay to tourism and the ouster of a chief justice through a simple quo warranto petition filed by the government’s chief lawyer.

Constitutional amendments, which could boost competitiveness and make the country a more attractive investment destination, are bogged down in the effort to ram federalism down the nation’s throat.

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The person and circumstances are different, but some quarters are comparing Duterte to that other former mayor who was also enormously popular when he assumed the presidency: Joseph Estrada.

Erap lasted only two and a half years as chief executive. As he entered his third year in 2000, his administration was already buffeted by numerous controversies. In October of that year, Chavit Singson, smarting from a suspected assassination attempt ordered by erstwhile bosom buddy Erap, publicly accused the president of receiving massive jueteng payoffs and skimming millions in cigarette excise taxes. This set in motion the events leading to Erap’s impeachment. By January 2001, Erap was out.

At this point, however, those hoping that Duterte will go the way of Erap soon, whether through people power or “constructive resignation,” can dream on. Duterte in fact has been pursuing his campaign platform of making the country a better place for investments, thereby generating employment and easing poverty, by fighting criminality.

He hasn’t strayed far either from his explicit campaign promise – unique among all the 2016 presidential candidates – to battle crime by killing people.

Unlike in Davao City, however, the shock value of bodies piling up nationwide in his drug war failed to eradicate the scourge in six months, as he also explicitly promised in his campaign. But it looks like people are prepared to cut him some slack in delivering on his promise.

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As of the first quarter this year, Duterte still enjoyed a “very good” net satisfaction rating of 57 percent in the Social Weather Stations survey – with a comfortably high 70 percent of respondents expressing satisfaction with his performance, a low 14 percent dissatisfied and 17 percent undecided.

The figure is down from the 78 percent gross satisfaction rating in December last year. Dissatisfaction also worsened from 12 percent, for a net rating of 58. And the numbers can only get worse amid the “stupid God” and tambay controversies.

Still, Duterte’s ratings are far better than Erap’s at around the same period in his presidency: a net satisfaction rating of five percent, or 43 percent satisfied, 38 percent dissatisfied and 18 percent undecided.

Popularity buys political and mass support in this country. Supporters lament that Erap squandered his popularity. Noynoy Aquino, during much of his term, used his popularity to push difficult reforms and legislative measures.

Popularity is often wasted on populists. There are still so many difficult reforms to be undertaken, which President Duterte can accomplish if he uses his popularity wisely.