TO say that President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos
Jr. has his predecessor President Rodrigo Duterte’s huge shoes to
fill in, is a big understatement.
Duterte’s approval ratings
throughout his term have been the highest among his predecessors, ending at a
remarkable 87 percent in June just before he stepped down from office,
according to a recent Pulse Asia report. That news, I was shocked, appears to
have been suppressed, reported only in a Facebook post, a demonstration of the
continuing hold of the Yellows of media.
There is another
aspect that emphasizes how phenomenal has been the Filipinos’ nearly universal
support for their most recent president. Duterte’s 87 percent is the highest
among nine “global” leaders of major countries in the world and four heads of
Asean countries.
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| (behance,net) |
Prime
Minister Narendra Modi, whom one poll claimed has been the best prime
minister of India next to Indira Gandhi, is 10 points below Duterte. Much more
behind are Singapore’s Lee Hsien Loong, Indonesia’s Joko Widodo and Andres
Obrador. Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, and Justin Trudeau — whose governments have
vociferously bashed Duterte as a bloody authoritarian — are in the bottom of
the list. Ironic, isn’t it: the Nobel Committee, manipulated by
the US State Department, gave the Peace Prize to a fraud
whose claim to fame has been to allege that Duterte has been one of the worst
leaders of the country ever.
If we use the survey
for April 2022 by the other polling organization, Social Weather Stations,
Duterte’s 65 percent net satisfaction (satisfied minus unsatisfied) is miles
ahead for the equivalent months of Benigno Aquino 3rd (27 percent), Arroyo
(-17), Estrada (+7 in December 2000), Ramos (+19), and Corazon
Aquino (+7). No other president even got close to Duterte’s popular
support.
What is astonishing in
Duterte’s high ratings is that from Day One of his administration the majority
of mainstream media have been attacking him, in a frenzy I suspect because of
their expectation that, with US help, he would not finish his presidency, so
Vice President Leni Robredo would take over and usher in another
Yellow era. The Yellow oligarchs had continued their vicious propaganda to
paint him as a human rights violator who should be prosecuted in
the International Criminal Court.
Most hated
Indeed, Duterte has
been the most hated Philippine president ever by the US and its media, with
even New York-based journalists like Columbia School of
Journalism professor Sheila Coronel writing scathing but false
articles against him, like the one entitled, “A presidency bathed in blood.”
Rappler, funded by US entities, as well as Vice President Robredo waged a
campaign that lasted five years to demonize Duterte in the world. They even got
prosecutors of the International Court of Justice to believe their now totally
debunked claims of 27,000 Filipinos killed in his historic war against illegal
drugs.
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| (photo credit to Rigobertotiglao website) |
Filipinos have
rejected these vicious black propaganda.
For the first time in
our history, a Philippine president has defied the US, and has not only
survived, and with flying colors. This is one of Duterte’s important legacies:
He demonstrated that we can be free of the American eagle’s clutches, and
survive.
With Duterte’s
presidency, his concrete achievements, and Filipinos’ nearly landslide support
for him, I am wondering why Marcos in his first 30 days in office has acted as
if there had been no spectacularly successful administration before him, from
which he and his government should learn much.
His executive
secretary on his first day in office issued a directive for all Duterte
appointees co-terminus with his term to immediately step down. The last time
that occurred was during the first days of the Cory administration. That order
demonstrated, it seemed to me, a frame of mind of the new government’s (or the
executive secretary’s alone) that the previous administration was not an ally.
Why else would you hurry to cleanse the bureaucracy of all remnants of the
previous administration? Did those Duterte appointees have nothing to share in
terms of experience with BBM’s new people? Now the executive secretary would
have to burn tons of midnight oil to fill in quickly these 8,000 posts vacated,
risking unqualified, corrupt, or diehard Yellows sneaking into the new
government.
Transition
A rational transition
from a successful administration, I would think, should have involved letting
Duterte’s appointees — even Cabinet secretaries — remain at their posts for,
say, three months. Their replacements could then have been “understudies,” to
be briefed comprehensively by the past administration’s men to ensure a smooth
transition. The rush to clear the house of everybody found there will
inevitably lead to mistakes.
Why on earth would the
Presidential Management Staff (which I once headed), one of whose many tasks is
to provide the President valuable information through what Fidel Ramos called
“complete staff work,” take over the Radio Television Malacañang [which was
once technically under me when I was press secretary].
I found it curious and
interesting that among others, the APO Production Unit, the National
Printing Office and the People’s Television Network have been put directly
under the Office of the Press Secretary.
These have been the
most problematic, but potentially “money-making” units — if you know what I
mean — in Malacañang’s media apparatus, APO is in a joint venture with a
private firm that has been printing our passports; the National Printing Office
has had a long history of corruption, as it’s easy to contract out the printing
orders it gets from government units; and PTV is practically a huge
corporation, which has its supply and equipment needs. I hope the press
secretary Trixie Cruz-Angeles placed these under her direct supervision to keep
close tabs on them.
Indeed, one serious
problem of our Republic is that each administration acts as if there had not
been any previous administration. As a result, we haven’t built up a
bureaucracy with institutional memory, a succeeding administration embracing
the valuable lessons of the previous one.
Of course, BBM, as all
presidents have been, would have their own fixed idea of how the Republic
should be run. But it is also rational to continue the past administration’s
successful undertakings. Not everything needs to be reinvented.
Think-tank
The think-tank and
pollster PUBLiCUS has given valuable input to the new administration when it
undertook a survey asking its respondents what issues the Duterte
administration tackled they would want to be continued by the incumbent
administration. These were ranked in the intensity of their approval, with the
top five as follows: 1) continuation of the Build, Build, Build program, 79
percent of respondents; 2) continuation of the war on illegal drugs, 78
percent; 3) continuation of independent foreign policy, 68 percent; 4)
provision of subsidies and incentives to micro-, small- and medium-sized
enterprises, 66 percent; 5) continuation of the National Task
Force to End the Local Communist Armed Conflict, 56 percent.
Of course, government
policy is not dictated by popularity. But at the very least, this list shows
how much Filipinos have valued these things that Duterte had undertaken, which
partly explains his popularity.
Even as BBM creates
and undertakes his own route he thinks will bring us to prosperity, he should
continue to address these issues that Duterte had tackled, so successfully he
has become the country’s best president, with support from his people unmatched
by any other leader in the world.
It’s a good feeling to
find that you’ve been proven right, especially if you had changed your mind. In
the 2016 elections, I batted for Jejomar Binay and wrote vociferous columns
against Duterte. Why did I change my mind|? I’ll point to as the famous
economist Paul Samuelson’s famous quote, ” When the facts change, I change
my mind. What do you do, sir?”
Quoted
fully from Mr. Rigoberto Tiglao’s column
The
Manila Times
July
22, 2022
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