Trump inherits Duterte

Donald Trump is a subject that has nagged the Filipino consciousness from the moment he stood for his Republican Party’s nomination; as president, he’s bound to do that even more.

The reason is Rodrigo Duterte.

Duterte is the Philippines’ own Trump – or Trump the United States’ own Duterte. That Duterte got his presidency ahead of Trump – in May – probably counts for something in comparative ascendancy. In any case, it should be tempting to put prognostications about the relationship between them, as well as between their countries, in the context largely of character; that is, after all, the main force that apparently drives them both.

Duterte and Trump are wont to flout universal norms of civility. It is to Trump’s credit, for instance, that the language and general conduct of US presidential campaigns have declined to levels never seen before. He freely threw baseless accusations of corruption and treason at his opponent and put sexist, homophobic, and racial slurs on women, gays, and immigrants.

Duterte may have spared his own rivals any of that, but, toward women and gays, he was similarly demeaning. His favorite cuss phrase, with which he likes to pepper his speech, debases mothers. If there’s one Duterte deviancy Trump could not top, it’s his cussing. The Pope himself got it for snarling up traffic in Manila during his visit and upsetting Duterte’s campaign schedule.

Duterte, to be sure, has had a head start on Trump. He has since cussed fellow presidents, too – Trump’s own predecessor, Barack Obama, for one – and other foreign dignitaries, mainly for reminding him to observe the rule of law in his war on drugs. He may have done nothing to Trump himself, but Trump cannot escape him.

The run-in between Duterte and Obama has led to a diplomatic falling-out that has driven Duterte into the arms of China and, possibly, Russia. Fancying himself a triumvir with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin “against the world,” he announced during his recent visit to China “my separation from the United States.” Before that he had called off military exercises between the Philippines and the US, pulled out his sailors from their joint patrols of critical Philippine waterways, and told all American soldiers to leave. All that may be mere utterances, and shall remain as such – mere words – until the applicable treaties are abrogated.

Washington has been generally careful not to provoke Duterte further, but the human rights issue arising from his war on drugs is not something the Obama government is apparently prepared to compromise on. In the 4 months since Duterte took office, about 3,000 drug dealers and addicts have been killed, and, realizing he has been running late on his promise to eliminate the scourge by the end of his first year, he threatens to add 20,000 to 30,000 to that in presumably as short a time as possible.

Pursuing the moral concern raised by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) about that dubious war, the State Department has stopped the sale of some 26,000 assault rifles to the Philippine police, but their commander-in-chief replies he’ll get them from China or Russia.

That is the Filipino counterpart Trump inherits, a bellicose quitter on America who has been lost to an opposite ideological club led by China and Russia. How he approaches him and his government will depend on where the Philippines falls in his hierarchy of priorities, especially in regard to its geopolitical importance in parts where a world power like China covets sway. By his campaign pronouncements, he does not appear to like China at all, resenting it in particular for the American jobs lost to it by outsourcing. Russia seems to have a better appeal.

Surely Trump, having yet to assume the presidency and show us more specific hints at where his foreign policy is going, deserves the benefit of the doubt for his pat words on victory night: “We will get along with nations willing to get along with us.”

Duterte, for his part, already has betrayed too much of himself to be able to inspire any hope in his own message to Trump on his election, a message that sounds formulaic and definitely not himself, and looks forward to a relationship “of mutual respect, mutual benefit, and a shared commitment to the democratic ideals and the rule of law.” The message was sent out from his presidential palace, in Manila.

Speaking later that night to an audience of Filipino expatriates in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on the first day of a state visit, he was more like himself – personal, unpredictable, bipolar: “I don’t want to quarrel anymore; Trump is already here.”

One never knows what Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump might see of themselves in each other that would ignite a mutual identification, which could only lead to either of two things: they hit it off or they hit each other. – Rappler.com