If you have been living under a rock, Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, after a whirlwind of media frenzy with his Presidency decision, is now finally running for president due to the fact that he does not agree with the roster of Presidential hopefuls. A landslide of support has come his way. People are rejoicing that he is running but for some like Prinz, he has some reservations with the presidential hopeful.
Direct quote:
7 problems I have with Duterte running for president:
1. How can you take someone seriously who opted to run just because he feels “disappointed” with the current set of candidates? Feel mo God’s gift to the Philippines ang dating mo ganun? That sense of entitlement is dangerous.
2. If propaganda is the name of the game, Duterte could have easily won the best script and story. But presidency is more than keeping the audience at the edge of their seats. It’s about sitting with the rest of those leaders from APEC and ASEAN alike. What will you tell those leaders? That you were able to minimize crime by killing people yourself?
3. If all those dictatorship-implying comments are nothing but propaganda feeding into some Filipinos’ blinded sense of discipline, then that is irresponsible. But going with what is happening in Davao (the unresolved Davao Death Squad included), I doubt this is merely for a show. These are unique threats to real democracy that careless people are so blinded to put on the sidelines.
4. Duterte has never mentioned anything about his platform. You will say the other candidates as well, but for a local politician entering the national arena, we, as voters should be discerning enough to avoid the repeats of Binay (why the hell is he still using Makati as propaganda when he has served VP for five years now?). Let’s avoid falling into trap of politicans becoming famous for their words and start looking for substance. If national setup is not enough, I invite you to look at Indonesia’s Jokowi and to some extent, India’s Modi.
5. Duterte is a self-admitting human rights violator. Period.
6. At this early, I can see Duterte will disappoint and Filipino arrogance will again call on for a new leader since we are always like that: we feel entitled to everything but we refuse to comprehend that we ourselves should work for it and that nothing comes so easy that is not lost easily as well. We demand swift action that we see great failure to a presidency after a 100 days in office. To this end, Duterte will disappoint, not only because he is inexperienced, but he fails to comprehend the high expectations of people around him. He thinks he feels their pulse, but he barely touches the skin.
And 7…
Filipinos ourselves have committed the grave crime of connecting democracy to having choices. No matter how bad they are (just how many nuisance candidates do we have?) Worse, while most of the time we realize the bad choices that we have, we look at the other side and hail this as a vibrant democracy. This, by itself, is shallow thinking that Duterte proliferates.
Real democracy lies on the hands of an educated citizenry. Educated, not elitist. We have been fond of intelligence shaming that we do not see the value of looking behind the candidates like Duterte who resort to change that we do not really understand. Instead, we rely on our gut: we feel that when they say change, it will mean better transportation, it means more money in our pockets, more jobs and better lives. We are nothing short of expectations, but the bad part of it is we look for results IMMEDIATELY. That’s irresponsible. That’s naive. That’s hopeless.
That’s why I am NEVER for Duterte. Instead of promoting hope by advocating education and overall social welfare, he wrongly correlates crimes and social ills to as if people are naturally bad or stealers or killers that they deserve to die. He does not create hope or positive change as his much-awaited candidacy implies. Looking beyond the surface, he feeds into everyone’s hopelessness and become selfish himself.
Do you agree with his sentiments? What do you think?
