Is Rodrigo Duterte a strongman? A 2,830-word New York Times article of March 21, 2017 thinks the Philippine President has the makings of one.
For the lengthy article, titled, “Becoming Duterte: The Making of a Philippine Strongman,” Bangkok-based contributor and Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran war correspondent Richard C. Paddock went to Davao for a number of days this early summer and interviewed relatives, friends, associates and government officials under Duterte.
The article describes Duterte as “a child of privilege turned populist politician, an anti-drug crusader who has struggled with drug abuse. Obsessed with death, he has turned his violent vision into national policy.”
“President Rodrigo Duterte relishes the image of killer-savior. He boasts of killing criminals with his own hand. On occasion, he calls for mass murder,” the article’s lead paragraph asserts.
The Times paints Duterte as a troubled “thug,” molested by priests in school, frequently whipped by his stern mother, prone to violence, and one who as mayor and president “has encouraged the police and vigilantes to kill thousands of people with impunity.”
Not surprisingly, Malacañang, the presidential Palace, has strongly reacted to what it calls the “cynical and unfair” Times report. Smirked Presidential Spokesman Ernesto Abella: “One gets the feeling NYT is not interested in presenting the whole truth, only that with which they can bully those who attempt an independent foreign policy.” “NYT cynically and unfairly narrates the President’s rise to power in the context of violence,” Abella said, noting that the paper “deliberately” failed to mention Duterte’s accomplishments in 23 years as Davao City mayor.
This is the second major NYT piece on Duterte in less than three months. On Dec. 7, 2016, NYT had a horrid piece on Duterte, “They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals,” by Times photographer Daniel Berehulak who apparently documented the killing of 57 homicide victims over 35 days of Duterte’s “brutal antidrug campaign.” It won an award for photography.
It now seems to me that if a foreign correspondent wants to win a journalism award, all he has to do is fly into Manila and Davao, stay for a few days, and rake up dregs about Duterte. Usually, such a parachute journalist will not be disappointed. Duterte is a very colorful man. He uses a colorful language, in Cebuano, Tagalog and English. He curses, breaks protocol, and has no patience with diplomatic niceties and political correctness. The mayor is a product of his milieu and the rambunctious politics of his times.
If an editor is tired of terrorist attacks here and there and of Donald Trump’s constant lying and moneymaking on the side by his family, a crisp Duterte article or feature is sure to break the monotony and humdrum of the daily grind.
For many weeks in the past six months, Duterte was the second-biggest story on global news networks after Trump. A writer or a tv crew can easily paint Duterte as a Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson of the East, one who minces no words and has no scruples at breaking your skull or cutting your body in half with machine-gun fire. The guy likes to retail tales of horrid murder before his friends—malcontents and criminals being dropped from a helicopter in the middle of the ocean, what the Times calls “sadistic exploits.” On the side, you can also portray him as a womanizer and a serial sexual harasser. Duterte certainly breaks the man-bites-dog definition of news.
Such an approach becomes a problem when it becomes a pattern. When you become a “project” of foreign media. You are no longer a news item. You are a target.
Like Allende of Chile who was said to have been assassinated (by the CIA?) but who official records indicate “committed suicide.” Or Castro of Cuba against whom the CIA launched some 53 unsuccessful assassination attempts, including an outright US invasion, until he died of old age.
The last time The New York Times zeroed in on a Philippine strongman, it was against Ferdinand E. Marcos who ruled the country with an iron grip for 20 years until he was ousted by a largely peaceful coup and People Power revolt in February 1986.
Many believe the United States set the stage for Marcos’s ouster after he limited the lease on the US bases in the Philippines from 99 to 25 years, demanded annual rentals for their use, and veered his foreign policy towards China.
Before Marcos’s removal, however, America’s major newspapers like The Times wrote unrelentingly about Marcos’s alleged human rights and other abuses in articles that were in part glowing, in part critical but often ridiculously about the Philippines’ politics, economy, the elite, and the masses. The image conveyed was that of a Third-World country ruled by a dictator whose family behaved like a monarchy, whose economy was a basket case, and whose future was anything but bright.
So is it déjà vu time in the Philippines?
Early on in his presidency, Duterte announced a policy that seems to end the country’s long-standing ties with America and nuances a pivot to China, and even Russia. Duterte visited Beijing in October 2016 and will visit Moscow this April.
Duterte last year even called Barack Obama the son of a whore and vowed to punch him in the face if he met him in an international summit of leaders. The opportunity never came because Obama canceled a scheduled tetê-á-tetê with Duterte. Only last December, the President told the Americans: “Prepare to leave the Philippines. Prepare for the eventual repeal or the abrogation of the Visiting Forces Agreement,” referring to a 1998 accord that governs American forces visiting the Philippines for joint combat exercises.
Last week, however, amid an impeachment complaint filed against Duterte in the last session day of Congress before the Holy Week break, the President announced his friendship with US President Donald Trump.
“I think we’re headed for something that is very… an understanding platform for both countries,” Duterte said at a presscon in Burma (March 19). He considers Trump a “realist.”
“He [Trump] is a guy who knows what is real, what is not, and he does not engage in theories. And even in the matter of human rights, he takes into account everything,” he explained. “I can assure him [Trump] also of our friendship and cooperation. There’s no problem with that. Under the Trump administration I will give all, whatever it is. Short of ’yung sabi ko [But short of] military alliances, ayaw ko na niyan [I don’t want that],” Duterte said.
Does Duterte sense he is being set up by some foreign elements? Not clear yet.
