In May 2016, the Philippines elected a new President – President Rodrigo Roa Duterte. His name is popularly abbreviated as “Du30” for “thirty” is pronounced “terte” by many Filipinos. However, he is not in his ‘30s. He is 71 and is the oldest elected President ever in the country’s history.

Duterte was an outlier in Philippine national politics. He hails from Mindanao or southern Philippines, the poorest among the three island groupings of the archipelago. Past Presidents, Vice Presidents and most of the Senators came mostly from the more developed Luzon or northern Philippines and the Visayas or central Philippines. He ran under a small political party, PDP-Laban, which could not field a full slate of congressional and local candidates in the various provinces and towns of Mindanao, and hardly any in Luzon and the Visayas. He is also not identified with the “yellow” movement, the anti-Marcos coalition which catapulted Mrs. Corazon C. Aquino to the Presidency in 1986 through a “People Power Revolt” and which dominated Philippine politics for nearly three decades since. In 2010, the “yellows” got Duterte’s predecessor, Benigno S. Aquino, elected, by a landslide.

Among the five Presidential candidates, Duterte was the most un-Presidential. He has a coarse language. He curses and swears a lot in all the three languages – English, Tagalog of Luzon and Cebuano of Mindanao and Visayas. He threatened to “kill” all drug pushers and criminals once elected. He boasts openly about his excess libido and womanizing. He castigates the Catholic Church for its ‘hypocrisy” on sex and other matters. Once elected, he did not hesitate to call the American ambassador a “gay ambassador”, whom he lambasted for “interfering” in Philippine politics because the ambassador made anti-Duterte remarks during the campaign.

Throughout 2015, Duterte was not in the political radar of the political strategists based in “imperial Manila”. He also did not rate well in the surveys for that year. So how come Duterte the political outsider got elected by a landslide, ahead of his closest rival by six million votes in what was originally projected to become a very close five-way Presidential contest?

 Oblivious of the masses’ sentiments

Duterte’s election was devastating to his predecessor, President Benigno Aquino. The latter left no stone unturned in pushing for the election of his anointed, Manuel Roxas. Aquino’s candidate has the right political credentials from an elite political perspective: American educated, investment banker and grandson of a former President who haled from the Visayas. Above all, Roxas embraced the “Daang Matuwid” (“Straight Path”) slogan of the Aquino Administration as the overall theme of his campaign. The message is that Roxas would continue the anti-corruption drive and the high-growth program of the Aquino Administration. Thus, the Aquino Administration tried to mobilize all possible resources to ensure Roxas victory and secure Aquino’s “political legacy”.

The first victim of the Aquino-Roxas political campaign was Vice President Jejomar Binay, the Vice President, who was leading the Presidentiables in the political surveys in 2015. Like Duterte, Binay was a successful City Mayor for over two decades. One differentiating element: Binay was Mayor of the richest city in the country, Makati, the Philippines’ financial address. Another differentiating feature: the Binay family was accused of amassing so much wealth in three decades of shepherding Makati. In the Senate, the Aquino-Roxas supporters lost no time conducting one investigation after another inquiring into and exposing the unexplained wealth of the Binay family. By the beginning of 2016, Binay’s numbers were down.

The next victim of the Aquino-Roxas political maneuvers was the youthful, amiable and articulate Senator Grace Poe. The lady Senator is the adopted daughter of the country’s most popular movie actor, Fernando Poe, who was robbed of the Presidency in 2004 due to alleged rigged election results favoring President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Senator Grace Poe was recipient of two major disqualification cases filed in the Supreme Court – first, she was considered not a “natural-born” Filipino because she could not establish who her real parents were, and second, she was accused of failing to renounce her American citizenship which she acquired after working in the United States for a while. A month before the elections, Poe’s numbers were down.

As to the fifth Presidential candidate, the feisty Senator Miriam Santiago, the pollsters did not even bother to discuss her chances. She has lung cancer and is hardly seen in public. However, she is highly popular among the college students because of her wit and intelligence.

What surprised the pollsters and the political analysts was the steady rise in the numbers for Duterte, the political outlier, in the campaign months from January to April 2016. The swing of the voters’ sentiments in favor of Duterte caught the Aquino-Roxas political supporters flat-footed. They hurriedly dug up charges of human rights violations allegedly committed by Duterte as Mayor of Davao. When these did not affect Duterte’s rising popularity, they tried to look for corruption issues that could be hurled against Duterte similar to those that pulled down Binay. However, these charges came late, unproven and did not alter Duterte’s zooming ratings in the election homestretch. The Aquino-Roxas campaigners later admitted that they were “blind-sided” by the issues concerning the other candidates deemed as formidable opponents, meaning Vice President Binay and Senator Grace Poe.

The truth is that the Aquino-Roxas camp failed to see the overwhelming sentiment of the people for real change given the continuing reality of mass unemployment/underemployment and mass poverty experienced by the many amidst rapid economic growth. For 2010-2015, the Philippine GDP averaged 6.2 per cent, a figure repeatedly mentioned by the Aquino Administration as proof that the economy under Aquino was not only one of Asia’s best performing but also in the world. And yet, official statistics show that one out of four Filipinos remains poor, with the poverty incidence placed at 26 per cent. If the ridiculous poverty threshold of P52 a day (roughly US$1.10) is raised to P104 a day, the number of poor would officially increase to over 50 per cent of the population. The highly-publicized call center/BPO boom that created one million jobs could not erase the fact that 3 million Filipinos are unemployed, six to seven million are underemployed, four million are unpaid family workers and 14 million work at less than 40 hours a week (some for an hour or two only). Were it not for the US$2 billion a month remittances by overseas Filipino workers, the Philippine economy would be in direr straits and poverty and inequality would be a lot deeper.

As to the anti-corruption crusade of the Aquino Administration, this appeared promising in 2010-2012 when the government was able to put the former President, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo under “hospital arrest” due to plunder charges and succeeded in impeaching the complicit Chief Justice, who could not explain his huge dollar and peso bank deposits. However, the “Daang Matuwid” or “Straight Path” governance program of the Aquino Administration got stalled along the way. The Administration failed to correct the notorious pork barrel system that allows legislators to select and assign public works projects to their favorite contractors and/or partner civil society organizations. The corruption cases filed against the Department of Agriculture and other government agencies hardly moved. And the President’s KKK circle – or the network of “kaklase”, “kabarilan” and “kamag-anak” (classmates, gun club cronies and relatives) — received special privileges and appointments in government.

In the meantime, the nation was inundated by other problems the Aquino Administration was unable to address effectively and efficiently – monstrous traffic problems in Metro Manila and other metropolises due to weak infrastructures and poor urban planning, nationwide proliferation of drugs, rising crime statistics, poor recovery in areas affected by super-typhoon Yolanda, El Nino-related drought hitting agriculture in various parts of the country, continuing rural insurgency, unfinished peace negotiations with the Muslim rebels, bloody Muslim uprising in Zamboanga city, bloody botched police encounter in a Muslim town [1], bloody hunger strike of angry farmers in Kidapawan, another Mindanao town, and so on and so forth. The Philippines is clearly in need of a strong reformist leader.

In the end, there is consensus among the pollsters and political analysts: the Duterte victory in the 2016 Presidential elections is largely a “protest vote”, protest over the sad state of affairs in the country. Protest over poverty, inequality, lawlessness and so on.

 But why Duterte?

The answer to the above question is that Duterte captured the imagination of the voters coming from different classes, from the ordinary folks to middle-class professionals and medium-sized business people. His election slogan — “change is coming” – resonated to many hoping for improved peace and order, more and better jobs and decisive yet corruption-free governance.

As the long-time Mayor of Davao, Duterte was able to build the image of a strongman obsessed with cleaning up the city. He transformed a strife-torn and insurgency-ridden city into one of the most peaceful and progressive cities of the country. He presided over this transformation by ridding the city of drug pushers and criminals and imposing the Duterte brand of discipline city-wide, including the disarming of the private bodyguards of visiting political warlords from neighboring provinces of Mindanao. At the same time, Mayor Duterte managed to somehow maintain lines of communication with the various armed groups operating in Mindanao, primarily the New People’s Army of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front (NPA-CPP-NDF) and the two armed wings of the Muslim separatist movement, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). He has respected these armed groups and has asked them to spare Davao from the armed conflicts that erupt from time to time in various parts of Mindanao. As a result of the foregoing, peaceful Davao has consolidated its role as Mindanao’s premier business and investment destination in the region.

His political enemies claim that Davao peace was established over the dead bodies of over 1,000 drug pushers and criminals eliminated through the years by a shadowy group of vigilantes called the “Davao Death Squad” or DDS. There are no official confirmations or denials of the DDS from the City Hall of Davao, only short comments by Mayor Duterte that drug pushers and criminals have no human rights. However, the issue of “extra-judicial killings” (EJKs) raised by human rights groups and even the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) did not sway the voters from voting for Duterte. He was their strongman.

The strongman also happens to be “one of the guys”, or as a man of the masses. He dresses simply and prefers to ride in his big bike touring the city alone or incognito. His small residential home in Davao is like the servant’s house in the residences of the elite of Manila. He proudly explains that his “girl friends” do not get any extra privileges, for they live simply and reside in simple apartments. During the electoral campaign, he claimed that he is a “socialist” for he is pro-poor and most of his programs benefit the poor; at the same time, he explained that he is not a “communist” or a member of the NPA-CPP. However, he has a streak of anti-Americanism; in his youth, he was part of the militant student movement protesting against the US war in Vietnam and American political interventions in the Philippines that date back to the American colonial conquest of the Philippines in 1898-1902.

 Change is coming: The war on drugs

True to his campaign promise, President Duterte immediately launched a nationwide “war on drugs”. He appointed a trusted police officer, General “Bato” (the “Rock”) de la Rosa, as head of the Philippine National Police and as the overall field marshall for the anti-drug campaign. He repeatedly declared that drug pushers and drug lords have no human rights. He assured the police force of full protection if they kill the criminals and drug traders resisting arrest.

In the first month (July) of his Presidency, the Philippine Daily Inquirer gave the following scorecard on the war on drugs — 596 drug pushers and drug lords killed (400 by the police and 196 by the shadowy death squads or vigilantes), 4,000 pushers/users arrested, and around 500,000 drug users and pushers surrendering in virtually all regions of the country. These figures are mind-boggling and show the extent and breadth of the national drugs malaise. And the number of casualties and arrests keep growing with the mass media giving daily accounts of how many are killed or arrested or have surrendered. The anti-drugs campaign also show the shortage of jails in various cities and provinces and the abject lack of drug rehabilitation centers and drug rehabilitation programs in the country.

The most daring move of President Duterte was his effort to “name and shame” big drug lord protectors within the military, judiciary and among the local government units (LGUs). On television end of July, he read the names of 158 judges, military officers and mayors, including other government officials, allegedly coddling drug lords. Supreme Court Chief Justice Meilou Sereno reacted negatively to the public naming of the judges, saying that the Supreme Court can do its own investigation based on certain legal procedures. The different LGU officials protested that they were not given due process, an issue that has been raised time and again by the CHR and some members of the Senate and House of Representatives regarding a number of drug-related killings and arrests.

Nonetheless, the war on drugs has palpably lessened drug use and incidence of drug-related crimes nationwide. However, it has also divided the nation. Human rights advocates denounce the vigilante killings and the alleged summary executions made by arresting police as “extra judicial” and subversive of the principles of due process and protection of human rights. A number of families have come forward to denounce the killing of innocent victims and those arrested based on false accusations. The reality is that the drug problem has economic, social, political and even cultural dimensions. Majority of the drug users are poor people themselves. They buy cheap “shabu” sachets made of metaphemtamine to keep themselves awake at work and to avoid pangs of hunger.

The Philippine war on drugs has naturally caught the attention of the world. Dr. John Collins of the London School of Economics’ International Drug Policy Project warned that the Philippines’ war on drug users “will fail” for it is “a discredited strategy”. In particular, he highlighted the failure to address the demand side through public health programs, harm reduction and access to treatment. He also warned that criminalization and repressive prohibition simply drive the illegal industry to go deeper underground and to resort to more violence as what has happened in Mexico and other countries that have declared a similar war on drugs. He also mentioned the possible erosion of the rule of law, a warning that hit the nerves of many Filipinos when President Duterte, in his emotional reaction to Supreme Court Chief Justice on the unnecessary naming and shaming of judges, floated the idea that he might “declare martial law”. The martial law idea was immediately denied by Malacanang spokespersons the day after.

In the meantime, majority of the Filipinos have kept faith with President Duterte and his war on drugs and other crimes. In a recent poll survey by the Social Weather Station, he got over 90 per cent approval rating, the highest a sitting President got since the SWS conducted such surveys from the 1990s onward.

 Change is coming: waging peace

It is not all war and killings for the Duterte Administration. It has also launched a peace offensive, this time through peace talks with the armed rebels.

On the Muslim rebels’ demand for independence and autonomy, Duterte adopted a more inclusive and open approach. He announced that his government is reaching out to both the MILF and the MNLF as well as to the various “lumad” (indigenous) groups of Mindanao. As a backgrounder, the previous Aquino Administration favored talks only with the MILF, talks facilitated by Malaysia. Aquino also issued an arrest order for the leader of the MNFL, Nur Misuari, who led a bloody uprising in Zamboanga City which the Aquino Administration crushed after a week of fighting. Talks on the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) that were crafted by the Aquino’s peace team have been revived.

However, the Duterte Administration wants the BBL to be part of a bigger political reform program that seeks to shift political governance towards federalism. This would entail change in the existing Presidential system and amendment of the Constitution. Hence, the idea has re-ignited debates on the Constitution, presidential versus parliamentary form of government, powers of a regional autonomous government, etc.

Despite these ongoing debates, the shift to federalism is headed for adoption by a compliant Congress. With his popular mandate and strongman image, President Duterte was able to form a “supermajority” in both houses of the legislature even if there is only one original PDP-Laban Senator in the upper house and a few in the lower house. Congress is now debating whether changing the Constitution can be done through the conversion of the legislature into a Constituent Assembly or through the convening of an elected Constitutional Convention or through a Constitutional Commission created for this purpose. Whatever is the decision, it appears that President Duterte is likely to get what it wants at this point of time.

As to the NPA-CPP-NDF, the Duterte Administration has created favorable conditions for the renewal and deepening of the long-running peace talks that are usually held in Oslo, Norway. First, the government appointed several NDF nominees to the Cabinet. The Department of Social Work and Development (DSWD), Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) are now headed by these nominees. There are also NDF nominees at the sub-Cabinet level such as the position of undersecretary of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), which is now occupied by an officer of the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), a militant trade union group identified with the NDF. Interestingly, the DOLE Secretary served at one time in the past as a lawyer of the KMU; now, the same Secretary also serves as the chief negotiator for the government.

Secondly, the government announced a unilateral ceasefire. This, however, was withdrawn when some government civilian armed forces were ambushed. The President was angry over the incident, while the CPP emeritus chairman, Jose Maria Sison, did not hesitate in describing the President as a master of “thuggery”.

And yet, despite the name-calling by both sides, the peace talks are continuing. Will this signal the end of the Communist insurgency, the longest in Asia, and the shift of the Communist movement towards parliamentary struggle? Will there be a unification of the different Communist factions that sprouted due to internal Party squabbles and splits over ideological directions after the collapse of the Berlin wall and China’s decision to embrace all-out marketization? Will the peace talks cause unease and opposition among the business supporters of the Duterte Administration and the members of his Cabinet cluster, who promised a continuity in the “macroeconomic framework” on fiscal, trade and investment policies followed by the government in the last three decades? Or is the peace talks a master stroke on the part of the Duterte Administration to put an end to the Communist insurgency and to push the Communist firebrands to bring their ideas peacefully in the political arena under a liberal democratic setting? It is difficult to foretell the answers to each of these questions.

But Duterte’s peace-making does not end here. He has also agreed to the request of the family of the Ferdinand E. Marcos to formally bury the preserved body of the late President in the Libingan ng mga Bayani (Cemetery of Heros). Despite widespread opposition from various groups opposed to the burial – from the Communists to the plain Democrats, the President has stood his ground. He added that the late strongman shall also be given full military honors as customarily given to national leaders. Obviously, he wants to end the long-running divisions between the pro-Marcos and anti-Marcos groups in society. However, by making the decision to bury him at the Libingan, President Duterte has managed to revive the divisions and the intense emotions that the divisions generate for both sides.

 The biggest war: the war on poverty

But another war is waiting for President Duterte – the war against poverty. As pointed out, his electoral victory is a vote for change, a protest vote by the masses against the ugly realities of endemic poverty, unemployment and inequality. It is not only a vote to eliminate the drug lords and drug pushers.

So far, the development blueprint to reduce mass poverty, unemployment and inequality produced by the Duterte Administration is sketchy. Right after the election, the chosen Cabinet members for the economic cluster headed by the Secretary of the Department of Finance (DOF) announced an eight-point agenda presented in a simple eight-point bullet format contained in half a page. There are three major development programs: continuity of macro-economic framework for a free economy (covering fiscal, trade and investment policy areas), public-private partnership (PPP) in infrastructure procurement and development, and provision of conditional cash transfer (CCT) for disadvantaged families to ensure schooling for the children and health care for the mothers. There is nothing new in these three development programs for these are the very same development programs enunciated in the Medium-Term Development Plans of the previous Macapagal-Arroyo (2004-2010) and Aquino (2011-2016) Administrations.

Later, the eight-point agenda was expanded to a ten-point agenda. However, the three central development programs – macro-economic framework for a free economy, PPP and CCT – have remained. The seven other development thrusts include the following: tax reforms, ease in doing business to encourage more investments, agricultural development, more investments on skills development and education, promotion of science and technology, responsible parenthood and improved land tenure management. These are really supplementary to the three basic programs on macro-economic framework governance, PPP in government procurement and CCT for families left out as the economy grows.

The foregoing has elicited observations from the left wing of the government and the social activists who supported Duterte that the government’s economic program is still essentially “neo-liberal” or veering towards more economic liberalism. Neo-liberalism has been blamed by these economic critics as the reason for the failure of both industry and agriculture to take off and even stagnate under economic globalization and liberalization.

And yet, it is difficult to say that the economic program of the government is simply a replica of the program of his predecessors. First, why should he appoint NDF nominees as heads of the DSWD, DAR and NAPC? These nominees can use their respective offices to push for more radical social reforms such as the free distribution of land to the landless which will have serious bearings on the directions of the economy. As it is, DAR Secretary Rafael Mariano is fiercely opposed to the proposed liberalization of the land market in agriculture, an idea being pushed by some economists supporting members of the Duterte’s economic cluster.

Secondly, he appointed a radical anti-mining activist, Ms. Gina Lopez, head of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). He also gave Secretary Lopez blessings to close down environmental projects that use large-scale open-pit mining methods which cause widespread damage to the community and the environment. Some of the investors in these projects are big-time foreign and domestic investors whose companies have been exporting raw ores to China and other countries. One offshoot of the closure of some mines is the rising nickel prices in the world market because China sources its nickel mostly from the Philippines. Is this the end of the free trade policy regime, at least in the mining industry?

Thirdly, President Duterte is capable of announcing bold policy reform proposals sans intensive prior discussion with members of his Cabinet. For example, he told a foreign ambassador that he is opposed to the Paris Club agreement on the reduction of GHG emissions because the Philippines is still on the road to industrialization. When told that the Philippines is a signatory to the Paris Club agreement, he said that it is “not my signature”. A week later or so, he announced that the Philippines need to revive its steel industry, an industry that got buried by a spate of wrong government decisions in the 1990s, for example, selling the National Steel Corporation to speculative investors of Malaysia and India in the name of steel privatization.

 A host of unresolved economic issues

There are many other unresolved economic policy issues and challenges that are bound to be debated by different factions within the government and those outside. The most important are the following:

Labor “contractualization”. During the electoral campaign and in response to the demand of the trade unions, President Duterte promised to outlaw “contractualization” in the labor market. The question is how would he do that? Under globalization, the labor market has become more flexible. There are numerous shades of outsourcing and various forms of short-term hiring, not to mention the fact that two-thirds of the labor force are in the informal sector. As it is, the issue of contractualization and the debates on how to minimize or prohibit it has caused confusion in the ranks of the business community, who complain that the Philippines is losing out to Asian neighbors with more flexible labor markets. On the other hand, the trade unions are angry that the rules banning various forms of contractualization are not yet developed and still to be implemented.

Massive return migration due to the global migration crisis. A major challenge facing the Duterte Administration is how to deal with the deepening global migration crisis resulting from the religious and political turmoils roiling the Middle East, the rising anti-migrant attitudes in Europe and North America and the declining absorptive capacity of many labor-receiving countries due to low growth and advances in robotization. What if there is a massive return migration by OFWs as a result of a full-blown crisis in certain regions such as the Middle East? In fact, it is reported that there are presently over 11,000 displaced Filipinos living in “tent cities” in the Middle East. How prepared is the government if a hundred thousand suddenly return home without any savings and without any penny in their pockets? The crisis then becomes a crisis at home? As is well known, the Philippines survives largely through the remittances of over 11 million OFWs composed of permanent immigrants, short-term contract workers and irregulars/undocumented. They constitute over 10 per cent of the estimated national population of 105 million. And yet, the government, on paper, wants them to come and work at home even if there are no readily available jobs for them. There are also no transition programs in place for the OFWs and for the nation as a whole, that is, for the country to be less dependent on OFW remittances.

End of CARP, re-launching of a new one? The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) is now 28 years old. And yet, the land distribution component is still unfinished and policy makers are divided on what to do with CARP: terminate, extend, overhaul or do nothing. There are voices within the executive and legislative branches of government calling for the termination of the program; there are also voices, not too many, calling for the extension and overhaul of the program in favor of a more radical version of agrarian reform. Which side will prevail and how will the NDF-nominated DAR leadership proceed? In the 10-point economic development agenda whipped out by the economic cluster, agrarian reform was surprisingly not mentioned, only agricultural development and a vague reference to “land security”.

Economic relations with China. This is a difficult imponderable in the light of the UN Arbitration Committee’s ruling that the “nine-dash” theory of the Chinese which says that they own most of the seas between China and its neighboring Southeast Asian countries is baseless. The problem is that China has become a big economic power with growing economic ties with the Philippines and other SE Asian countries. As to the maritime dispute, it was the Aquino Administration which filed the case to the Hague-based UN tribunal. The Duterte Administration appears more inclined to appease China through bilateral back-channeling talks. Thus, one of the proposed solutions to the tensions generated by the maritime dispute and the subsequent UN ruling is the joint exploration by China and the Philippines of the marine and other resources in the disputed seas, an idea that was first raised under the Macapagal-Arroyo Administration. The problem is that such an approach might be interpreted at home and elsewhere as an abject Philippine surrender of its sovereignty, while a firm affirmation by the Philippines of its right over the disputed seas might sour the economic relations between the two and might even precipitate confrontations in the high seas involving the United States, Japan, Vietnam and other SE Asian countries. The Philippines has an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with the United States while Japan and Vietnam have similar complaints on China’s sea-and-island grabbing activities in the disputed waters between China and its neighbors.

The foregoing are some of the economic issues and imponderables facing the Duterte Administration. There are many others. The problem is that the Duterte Administration still has to work out a full-blown development blueprint addressing these issues and imponderables. Another problem is that within the Cabinet of Duterte, there are opposing world views on what is best for the country.

Is this bad? Not necessarily, if the Duterte Administration has the capacity to foster healthy debates on the economic, social and political directions that the country must adopt and the same capacity to choose the right mix of policies supportive of the vision of inclusive, just and sustainable Philippines. Yes, change is coming to the Philippines, but its shape and substance are work in progress.

Rene E. Ofreneo, September 13, 2016

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