OPINION: What does it take to make Duterte run? By Jerry Dureza

HE IS the most talk about political leader in the country today. Ever since he emerged from his cocoon as mayor of one of the cities in the Philippines, he had flown the distance hopping from one place to another in one of the most grueling one-man crusade peddling Federalism and opening the eyes and minds of those who wish to listen, to learn and hopefully become disciples to the system which, according to him, remains to be the best panacea to the iniquitous iniquity in the country today.

Davao City Mayor  Rodrigo Roa Duterte never expected that huge crowds would assemble to lend their ears to the man which now and then crops up in national  news dispatches about how he deals with criminals and how he is being dealt with by Human Rights Commission and Department of Justice for his unorthodox means of confronting drug and kidnapping syndicates and other criminal recidivists.

These days Duterte emerges larger than life.  An undeclared candidate for President, he landed 3^rd in the surveys done by Pulse Asia and Social Weather Station. Still, most of the giant media establishments are not about to give him the limelight  and he space and would rather focus on the garrulous politicians who relish to bask under the klieg lights in vainglorious claim that that they are less corrupt and that VP Jojo Binay is enmeshed in deep shit of corruption. But this, the people are already fully aware of and nauseated.

Obviously Federalism is not as popular an issue as Duterte’s reputation. Amidst the rising tide of corruption and criminality people would assemble and listen appraising what man is this that makes Davao City one of the most peaceful, livable  and child-friendly cities in the world despite its being adjacent to the most troubled region in the Philippines?

Duterte’s Federalism road show severely lacks the requisites of election campaign and propaganda. He moves around in a shoe-string budget. He lacks financial resources but he has friends in many places who gladly offer him a room to pass the night. He is averse to expensive food and would rather go for steamed dilis wrapped in banana leaf. In short lutong bahay.  He has no qualms about being dressed appropriately because he thinks that denims and T-shirts are okay. The only time I saw him in borrowed suit was when he stood as sponsor to a wedding of a friend’s son. Because it was such a rarity his friends had a picture taken as a souvenir of him in an “amerikana”. Well, the other time I saw him wear a decent barong Tagalog was when he appeared before a senate hearing on smuggling cases in the country.

Talking of formalities Duterte  admits he does not have the niceties of diplomatic language like those of his peers. In the same hearing in the Senate hall he straightforwardly declared that if the suspected smuggler (which he identified) will surface and do his thing in Davao City and attempts to fight it out with the law he “will gladly shoot him”. He shocked the squeamish lawmakers, the CHR Chairwoman and the Justice Secretary.  He never hides his annoyance against crime and in unguarded quips would say that if he is President he will restore death penalty and not by any expensive means but hanging using laundry wire. What you see in him is what you get and what you hear is what you should expect.

Duterte is a man of few words but he engages his audience about Federalism for hours. But the open forum would stretch the more because, having heard and seen him in person, the discussion would graduate into earsplitting call for him to run for President. It is an apparent mindset that the people agree to his proposition to shift the present unitary system of government provided he is President.

Thus the challenge. What will it take to make the man to run especially one who shuns the power  of the Presidency but deserves it most?  Duterte dodges the clarion call for him run but gives us not just a glimpse but a clear agenda of how he will deal with the debilitating cancer of corruption that is gnawing at every fiber of government establishments. He need not prove anything on how he would deal with criminal syndicates because he has demonstrated this in more ways than what one can find in the books.

He says he lacks the qualification but he tells us of how and why, if he is president, some government corporation like the GSIS and the SSS be privatized and run by more competent corporate managers to make these yield better profits and improve the benefits of the members who are tired of the inefficiency and bureaucracy in these two government controlled corporations.

Davao City was again judged as the most child-friendly city in the Philippines and yet Duterte the mayor tells us that he does not have the quality of a leader that the people are looking for. He says he does not possess the skills to communicate like those who present themselves as presidential material. On the contrary, Duterte singularly holds the distinction of being able to talk with  separatist fronts and communist insurgents right in their turfs.  UP Prof. Clarita Carlos describes Mayor Duterte as the man with “a fire in his belly” and “intelligently courageous”.

Courage here includes the threat to dismantle both houses of Congress if within six to one year he, assuming he is President, will not achieve the reforms that he envisions.  That he will do this after proclaiming a revolutionary government.

The problem with Duterte is that he is like a chef who prepares the most delectable cuisine, lay this on the table where seated are hungry men, women and children. They salivate but have to wait because the clock hasn’t struck 12.

The mortal sin that Mayor Duterte commits in the event that he will elude the call for him to run for President is to consign the Filipino people to still another  decadent era of corruption and unabated criminality. The supreme aggravation here is that Federalism will forever be entombed in the catacomb of oblivion.

What will make Duterte run for the Presidency? I do not have the answer but I hope that this little piece will dwell in the innermost recesses of his mind and heart and tickle his conscience until he takes up the challenge. (Jerry Dureza – jerrydureza@yahoo.com)

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