What about a drilling device excited the President’s spokesman so much last week that he waxed poetic about the legacy his boss would leave behind?
“Presidents will come and go, but in the annals of Philippine history, President Rodrigo Roa Duterte will be remembered for the renaissance of infrastructure,” the presidential spokesman Harry Roque crowed at the presentation of the first tunnel boring machine needed for the Metro Manila Subway, which will become the country’s first underground rail system when it is completed in 2026.
Perhaps feeling futuristic, Mr. Roque went even further, saying the President would also be remembered “for beating COVID-19” and for “all the social legislation that he so shepherded, including Universal Health Care and Free Tuition in State Colleges and Universities.”
Of course, the Palace spokesman could not resist taking a shot at the President’s “many critics” who “will not stop until they regain power.”
“Let today’s event be recorded in the annals of Philippine history as another first of the Duterte administration. And to his critics, I have only this to say: Manigas kayong lahat (Drop dead),” he said.
Now, the construction of the country’s first subway system at a cost of P393 billion is certainly nothing to sneeze at, but does it truly signal a renaissance of infrastructure that was first promised when the President took office and launched his P8.4-trillion “Build, Build, Build” program?
Two-and-a-half years after that program was launched, the government revised its flagship projects as some of them ran into engineering or cost problems.
The new list consists of 100 infrastructure projects, only a little over half of which will be completed by the time Duterte steps down in 2022.
The new price tag is lower, at P4.3 trillion, and the list now contains several existing projects that were begun by previous administrations.
Of course, in comparison with the immediate past administration, this still might be seen as a renaissance of sorts, if only a modest one.
What is completely immodest is Mr. Roque’s claim that the President will be remembered for beating COVID-19—surely an overly optimistic prediction amid the ongoing pandemic and as health authorities grapple with a more transmissible variant of the disease that has reached our shores, and as vaccination has yet to begin.
Will historians remember President Duterte for “beating COVID-19” or will they recall that troublesome Lowy Institute study that ranked the effectiveness of the Philippine response to the coronavirus pandemic at No. 79 out of 98 countries?
Finally, Mr. Roque says the President’s critics will not stop until they regain power as if there is something inherently wrong or evil about what is surely an integral part of a healthy, functioning democracy. Is it not, after all, the free flow of ideas—often in conflict with each other—that can move a democratic society forward? That out of healthy debate will spring the best solutions to our country’s many problems? And isn’t it the goal of all opposition groups to become, by virtue of elections, the next party in power? Why should they drop dead for that?