Mayor Rodrigo Duterte is no longer presuming that he will be the next president. He is acting as the incoming president, and he has started announcing who the members of his government will be. It was not, as some had expected (or hoped!), a clean sweep, with a totally fresh slate. I do not think that would have been ideal, either. We have always had to grapple with the problem of lost “institutional memory” that follows when you purge government of all vestiges of the preceding administration. PNoy did that, and we have had a government that hobbled along for the past six years because, rejecting all that had come before, the Yellow Gang wanted to re-invent the wheel. Moody’s and other credible financial institutions, however, have set the records straight: the supposedly healthy economy that is the legacy of Mr. Aquino is actually the harvest of Mrs. Arroyo’s studied and scholarly economic leadership!
In one interview, Mayor Digong told his listeners that he was not comfortable with the title “President,” and preferred to be called “Mayor of the Philippines.” Charming, but definitely not allowed. The Philippines is not a township, and that just might suggest what Mayor Digong should be working on: the mighty and formidable shift from being an effective, salutarily autocratic city mayor to being president of the Philippines—in a system of government where checks and balances is jealously guarded and very much alive— who has made bold promises.
On the issue of contractualization, I am unqualifiedly on Mayor Digong’s side. Entrepreneurs have long been allowed to circumvent the law by “contractualization”—keeping employees really essential to their enterprises just under the period that allows them tenure, and then rehiring them after some interstice, or outsourcing in order to avoid the costs of benefits to regular employees. And so, it is only spite and contempt I have for the tycoons and the Makati chaebol who think it their prerogative to determine who should lead the Philippines. What the elections should have made clear is that the nation wants to be governed this time from Davao (which represents everything outside Manila) and not Makati! These brats recently took to the airwaves to warn against aggressive action on contractualization. They issued dire prognostications about stunting the economy if corporations are stopped from exploiting the working class (in the guise of providing them with job opportunities!). In a non-inclusive economy—such as ours that the Makati gangs helped PNoy put in place— that means: hurting corporate interests and the erosion of the profit embankment on which our oligarchs are perched! I hope Mayor Digong makes short shrift of their warbling and goes full speed ahead with every administrative and legislative weapon to lay siege on this fortresses of exploitation.
I have my issues with the death penalty, serious ones, but that will be for another column. It is clear, however, that Davao’s hotels are now fully booked with would-be vassals of every stripe and color, eager to raise their right hands to swear to a new allegiance, which makes one wonder whether these despicable opportunists have any real allegiance at all! It is not correct of course to assume that the President and the Legislature pursue diametrically opposed values. That would bring the Republic to a standstill. But it is good to have legislators who have the wisdom and the moral courage to stand up to the President so that nevermore shall we have the specter of congressmen filing articles of impeachment as mercenaries of the President. On the other hand, incoming president Digong has, I am convinced, the charisma—which is an essential quality of leadership—to draw the critical collaboration of the legislature to support the priority items on his agenda, such as the revision (not mere amendment) of the Constitution.
His overtures to the CPP-NDF-NPA are welcome. This long-running war of attrition, the longest-running insurgency, must come to an end. But Joma Sison, it seems to me, is being as delusional as PNoy, if he thinks that there is a national clamor for his return to the Philippines. There is none. The longing for an end to the skirmishes between NPA and government troops does not in any way translate into an eagerness for Joma’s return, nor even support for the CPP-NPA-NDF. And before we talk about releasing NPAs held in prisons, and offering their leaders government positions—which Jalandoni petulantly informs us they are not too eager to accept, proposing instead that they nominate non-NPA candidates (which defeats the entire purpose of Mayor Digong’s offer!), it will be well to remember that hundreds, thousands perhaps, of ordinary Filipinos were snatched from their horrified families in many a barrio or hamlet in the Philippines in the dead of night, hurriedly tried before “revolutionary courts” and mercilessly executed. Killing fields have been discovered; many will still be uncovered. The NPAs have blood on their hands, and a policy of placation may not exactly be just. We who remained on this side of the law are not the offenders, and they who took up arms against the law are not necessarily the nation’s champions.
All the same, I join an eager nation in welcoming the renewal of national life that Mayor Digong has promised, but I hasten to add that it just is not reasonable to expect of one man—even if he be mayor of the Philippines —to bring about that change that must perforce involve the conversion of our very own jaded souls!