Outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte admitted that he had underestimated the country’s illegal drugs problem and that he had been mistaken to promise he could clean up the mess in three to six months.
“Maybe it’s hubris. It was campaign time. Payabangan naman yang kampanya (campaign is a time for boasts),” he said at the inauguration of the Cebu-Cordova Link Expressway in Cebu on Wednesday.
At that time, he said, he was unaware of the involvement of top police officials in the drug trade.
Duterte’s ruthless approach to the drug problem—official figures say some 6,200 individuals have been killed for resisting arrest, but independent groups and human rights experts estimate the number to be between 12,000 and 30,000 instead – has made him notorious and has even sparked an investigation by the International Criminal Court.
Then again, it was not only the narcotics problem that then-candidate Duterte vowed to stamp out.
He also promised Filipinos that he would eradicate government corruption in more or less the same period, and that he would not hesitate to remove his own appointees and allies if they had a “whiff of corruption” about them.
Alas, the people soon saw that while he did remove some of these perceived-to-be-erring officials from their posts, he had no qualms installing them elsewhere in government.
Candidate Duterte also famously said he would jet ski to the Spratly Islands and plant the Philippine flag to assert our claims on the West Philippine Sea.
Last year, however, amid his favorite neighbor China’s continued advances in our territory, Mr. Duterte said this promise was just a campaign joke that only stupid people would take seriously.
Those who banked—if naively—on this dramatic gesture must have felt betrayed, let alone insulted.
Now that we only have a few more days before we troop to the polls, Mr. Duterte’s words about hubris, jokes, and boasts reverberate as we make final our decision on whom to elect as our next leader.
Candidates’ promises are standard fare during elections—how can we tell if they represent a serious intent to follow through, or if, like Duterte’s words, were uttered in the heat of this season as they woo the voters without whom they are nothing?
We have known this all along, but Mr. Duterte’s admission should settle all doubts about the matter.
When decoding candidates’ gibberish about the things they say they will do once in office, perhaps we can use as clues their previous actions—not words—to help us gauge their sincerity and capability.
If they have been actively working to address such issues long before they were courting our votes, perhaps we can give them the benefit of the doubt.
If they have always been knowledgeable about the issues, in both depth and breadth, perhaps they do know what they are talking about and not just relying on prompts from their handlers.
But if they have not even been busy in the past few years, much less directly confronting the problems that ail us, the fancy, lofty words that they utter are as meaningless to us as they are to them.
It’s time to wake up and see the candidates for who and what they truly are. If we continue to be uncritical about the disinformation being fed us, we can never expect to see change in our lifetime—no matter how big the promises are.