Duterte: The Terrorist, The Fascist, The Criminal
Duterte’s 5th SONA gave the people the perfect tool to pick him apart and expose all the failures and sins of this administration.
In his arrogant attempt to once again twist the truth, Duterte and his minions unwittingly laid bare just how useless, criminal, and fascist this administration has been.
When Duterte bragged about being in a strong fiscal position to weather out the crisis, millions of Filipinos asked why they still consider themselves lucky to be able to eat even just once a day.
When he talked about upholding children’s rights and protecting women against drug-users-turned-rapists, he reminded the people how his drug war saw the deaths of countless of minors and kids, and how he is the biggest enabler of rapists — especially among the ranks of his military.
When he said that the Martial Law in Mindanao ended without abuses, the country looked back at the stories of more than 800,000 victims of human rights violations by the AFP — from illegal arrests, fake surrenderees, and forced evacuations of families and communities, to bombings, rape, and murder of entire peasant communities.
And when he remarked that the government is going to “fight the pandemic with the same fervor as [it] did with illegal drugs,” the friends, parents, widows, and orphans of his bloody Oplan Tokhang trembled at the thought of possibly having to relive the horrors of state terrorism right at their doorstep.
Still, while Duterte was wasting his breath on futile lies, majority of the Filipino masses were going about their day as usual — desperately trying to make ends meet.
Despite all the vanity and pretense, neither Duterte nor his pompous cronies can deny the concrete situation of the people.
Workers who saw their sources of income suddenly vanish due to the pandemic are forced to work odd jobs here and there just to scrounge up some money enough for at least a meal a day. Farmers in the countryside are still throwing or giving away their crops due to difficulties in selling and transport. Jeepney drivers are still denied the right to make a living. Students everywhere in the country face the uncertainty and anxiety of being forced into online classes that require gadgets and means that are way beyond what their families can afford. Healthcare workers are reduced to pleading for donations for personal protective equipment and financial support that the government should be providing.
Between all these and the continuing and rising threat of the coronavirus pandemic, the masses are not affected, let alone interested, in all of Duterte’s blabbering about credit ratings, childish tirades against political rivals, and ceaseless praises for his favorite lapdogs.
Ultimately, the SONA was just another circus show for Duterte, his bourgeois comprador cohorts, and his imperialist masters.
Duterte’s 5th SONA also manifested how the administration’s state-sponsored terrorism is intensifying at every turn.
After the recently passed Anti Terror Act of 2020, Duterte is also pushing for the railroading of the bill to reinstate death penalty. Under the guise of his war against drugs combined with the ATA of 2020, the death penalty becomes the most convenient “legal” tool to eliminate his critics, dissenters, and everyone the administration desires to label as “terrorist”.
Coupled with Duterte’s efforts to subdue the militant youth and masses in the cities, he is calling for the swift implementation of the Barangay Development Program by the AFP in the countryside. What he claims to be a way of bringing accessible healthcare to far-flung areas is clearly a means to strengthen the “whole-of-nation approach” and use social services as a pretext for counterinsurgency operations.
With every passing day that the masses are forced to endure this crisis with no real response and help from the government, more Filipinos are being driven to a better understanding of the injustices that result invariably from a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society such as the Philippines.
Similarly, more patriotic youth and masses learn that the ultimate and sole solution to the crisis that have been plaguing the Filipinos since before the pandemic remains to be the armed revolution that is being waged by the New People’s Army.
Duterte continuously fails to see that pouring gasoline on fire will not put out the flames, but only make it burn stronger.
And with every attack Duterte and his fascist lapdogs launch against the people, the Kabataang Makabayan, and thus the New People’s Army, can only grow stronger.
This is how the masses will triump.
