President Rodrigo Duterte has returned home from his first international stage debut since taking his oath as chief executive of the Philippines on June 30, his propagandists claiming a successful visit while critics are more subdued with their assessment.
Catapulted to the presidency by over 16 million voters, arguably the biggest in the political ledger for presidential winners, he must by now be having thoughts that the country is bigger, in many departments, than his home city of Davao.
His outbursts, oft laden with needless interjections and quickly picked up by media, sometimes off context, have somehow tarnished his image as leader of a sovereign country.
The 71-year-old former city prosecutor after all is President of a country of 102 million people—with different political and cultural persuasions.
And any statement he makes, when he stands alongside world leaders, reflects the faces of the people he represents at home and abroad.
Some political observers are one in saying he should behave and, as one opinion maker put it, “not act as a Filipino foul-mouthed bully who shamelessly laces his statements with profanities.”
By such behavior, observers say he does not only shame himself before the international community but also puts to shame the people he represents.
And the comments of some of his alter egos following his outbursts—notably Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III—regarding Duterte’s reported comment on US President Barack Obama was most uncalled for as was Duterte’s provoked comment.
To justify Duterte’s reported comment—which was taken out of context by media—and calling Obama a lameduck president did not add points for Duterte, already by then mired in a diplomatic whirlpool.
Bello, himself a lawyer, should have realized that Obama, lameduck or not, represented the face of the United States.
Fact is, Donald Trump of the Republican Party and Hillary Clinton of Obama’s Democratic Party were united in their pungent words posthaste for Duterte’s name-calling.
That Duterte immediately tried to repair his run-in by saying his outburst was not meant for Obama but the White House only put into sharper focus the need to rein in his tongue and emotions before inquisitive media aching for a “good lead paragraph” or attention-grabbing headline.
Even if Duterte was replying to a hypothetical scenario—buried by his quick sharp tongue in the context of the story no longer explained by media—analysts say he should as President always check his reaction with the refined delicacy of a diplomat.
Even if he, 24 hours or less later, should apologize and rationalize he was just joking or did not mean that to be personal – in either or both his sincerity would be dented irreparably.
If he wants to be respected, say political observers, by world leaders he should be stronger with his grip when his tongue, commanded by his mind, aches to get loose.
Duterte, addressing newsmen with different agenda, editors, deadline and persuasion, should know when to stop without any elaborate answer.
Better yet, to stop the question on track, particularly if the question is based on a hypothesis.
As it was, in several instances, he immediately shifted to high gear, with his foul mouth unleashing a long diatribe based on a hypothetical situation—for which he said later was not for Obama but the White House.
Duterte does not even have to be media savvy, but he should, in the eyes of political analysts and some ordinary men in the streets, behave and hold his tongue more properly.
Some even have suggested, with some tinge of satire, that if Duterte does not wash his mouth with detergent soap before long he might be likened to a buffoon.
Given Duterte’s quick and strong inclination for irreverence and vulgar words in public in what may well be knee jerk reactions, some Filipinos, including some who voted for him in the last polls, feel rather embarrassed by what has been described by one observer as the President’s “crude truculence.”
That Obama cancelled a meeting with Duterte on the sidelines of the Asean Summit in Vientiane and his calculated remarks post the Duterte cuss words spoke volumes for either.
In the next breath, Duterte called Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations chief, a “fool” and then discarded his prepared text before the Asean leaders and spoke of the atrocities perpetrated by the Americans against the Filipinos during the pacification campaign in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century.
Curiously, however, he did not tackle the Summit the violence committed by the Japanese Imperial troops in the 1940s, the Filipino comfort women, and, among, others, the alleged foreign source of illegal drugs that have since addicted millions of Filipinos.
While some analysts saw Duterte as historically correct in so far as facts were concerned in the pacification campaign in the Philippines, his energy to raise that in the Asean Summit encouraged some questions.
It is the view of these analysts that the issue is whether any government should be free to violate the rights of its own people and check others from condemning such violations.
These analysts refer to the Bill of Rights in the Philippine Constitution, which says that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor shall any person be denied the equal protection of the laws.”
It is too soon to suggest how foreign investors look at the possibility of investing in the Philkippines, with 3,000 by latest count victims of extrajudicial killings.
But the American Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines has expressed “growing concern over developments that could harm the long-standing optimism of American business to invest” in the Philippines.
There have also been other reports which raised similar concerns—and those, even before the supposed harsh criticism against Obama.
But all does not seem lost on the tough-talking President, who has declared he is no lapdog of Washington, applauded by many in his country.
At the close of the Vientiane Summit, he addressed fellow heads of state and government in Asean that he was accepting the chairmanship for next year of the rotating chairmanship of the bloc from Laos “with great honor and humility.”
Great honor and humility—terms that should characterize his six-year tenure as Philippine head of state.
Terms that, while declaring he wants to steer Manila’s ship of state with an independent foreign policy, should take him and his Cabinet to behavior and language befitting diplomats and statesmen.
Duterte has said the Philippines, an ally of the United States for decades, will be pursuing “an independent foreign policy” under his administration to protect the country’s interests.
Yet some political analysts express some understandable reservations that in protecting the country’s interests Duterte should also always remember the infrastructure being built by the People’s Republic of China on some islands in the West Philippine Sea.
Unless Duterte means an “independent foreign policy” is anti-American and pro-other nations who do not, observers say, respect the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.
No one argues with Duterte when he said “we will observe and must insist on the time-honored principles of sovereignty, sovereign equality, non-interference and the commitment to peaceful settlements of disputes that will serve our people and protect the interests of our country.”
But analysts say there are situations on the ground—and even across the admittedly turbulent sea—that as well need to be addressed.
And addressed well without having to antagonize allies of long-standing.