[Newspoint] A virtual non-President

Rodrigo Duterte has begun to recede into history. This is not only because he is in the final year of his six-year term as president, but because certain critical functions and powers of that office are already being exercised by subordinates and even outsiders.

But does he know that? It’s unthinkable that his narcissism and cluelessness – about public governance and leadership most relevantly – allows him to realize that his hold on power is slipping at all, let alone to appreciate its meaning and know what to do about it.

Any possessor of those traits may be easy to ignore in the usual case, but certainly not in a leader. And, in Duterte’s case, they happen to work in combination so profoundly as to plunge the nation into depths of fear and misery it has never seen.

The evidence is simply too extensive and sensible, obvious even: extrajudicial killings, political persecution, suppression of basic rights (speech, press, and assembly), militarization, selective suspension of the rule of law, treasonable favors (to China in particular), blatant corruption, and, in this time of a pandemic, a combination of a lack of concern, a corrupt sense of priority, and an ineptitude resulting in widespread joblessness, hunger, and death.

All that, of course, could have been avoided if Duterte had not been put in power by a popular vote and afterwards enabled by his chosen lieutenants and coopted institutional leaders, a phenomenon aberrant in itself. The reason some of those voters and enablers are no longer ready to play along is something that requires a wider and deeper exploration to understand. But that it is happening should form, by itself, a factual and practical-enough basis for a reasonable speculation as to the security of the presidency.

I’ve heard Duterte referred to, since disappearing from in-person view, as “a virtual President.” Strictly speaking, it is incorrect. He is “virtual” only in the context in which the word has been appropriated for modern technology: he can be seen, and heard, on a screen, but cannot be engaged for an exchange other than by those sycophants appearing with him; most frustratingly, he cannot be questioned by the press, the institution precisely assigned by the Constitution to test, in behalf of the nation, the quality of his leadership.

What Duterte has actually become, given that he remains officially, legally President, is a virtual non-President – a President who, for all intents and purposes, is one, except in practice; whose duties and powers are exercised by someone else, not necessarily a chosen deputy of his, but one stepping up on one’s own initiative to fill vacuums he has left by incapacity or default. That someone thus becomes a virtual President, and aren’t we lucky to have such virtual Presidents.

Among them is Vice President Leni Robredo. Marginalized by the Duterte regime from the start, starved of budget for one thing, she’s not one to be caught sulking in self-pity for her convictions. Indeed, she manages to be useful and presidential where Duterte is neither, and has proved herself most reliable and inspiring during the pandemic and before that in times of natural disaster, to which the country is prone. Despite all the political and budgetary constraints put on her, she’s been more than just consoling company, thanks to humanitarian donors eager to trust her with their aid and supporters eager to volunteer their services.

In fact, a novel virus, a welcome one, though instanced by the pandemic, too, is spreading across the country. Arising from the same humanitarian sense moving Robredo, it’s a neighborhood center where donated aid, food mostly, is collected and at the same time dispensed. It is called “community pantry.” It serves as the virtual department of social welfare in Robredo’s virtual presidency, and puts to shame its official counterpart, with its already paltry aid yet diminished by corruption and too slow to arrive, if it arrives at all.       

Another virtual presidency is a collective one, made up of Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr., Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, and the chief of the armed forces, General Cirilito Sobejana. Together they are leading a state campaign on a second critical front: against the Chinese, for their intrusion in the West Philippine Sea. Locsin has been calling out those intruders at every turn, and Lorenzana and Sobejana deploying the forces to back Locsin’s words.

There’s no denying the part played by the Western powers rallying behind the Philippine effort; its seriousness, in any case, has not been lost on the Chinese: they’ve begun to reduce their presence in those waters and stay back, although not fully outside our territory. It may have become, for now, a cat-and-mouse game, but the moral triumph gives momentum to the campaign to reassert our sovereignty over the West Philippine Sea.

Notwithstanding an arbitral ruling affirming our claim on it, Duterte ceded the territorial sea to the Chinese, ostensibly to appease them – them bad, warlike losers who refuse to abide by a decision reached by an arrangement they signed up for. They have since lorded it over there, bullying even our fishermen out of their traditional, rightful livelihood and also constructing islands for military basing.  

Duterte continues to defend the Chinese presence in our sea, but his words ring hollow after the virtual presidential triumvirate of Locsin, Lorenzana, and Sobejana has begun to put the Chinese in their place, in open contradiction of his avowed saccharine sentiments toward them – “I simply love Xi Jinping,” he declared during his visit to China in 2018. But he looked most pathetic and laughable when he challenged former Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio, the sovereignty advocate whom he has been roundly savaging in his distant, virtual monologues, to a debate on the West Philippine Sea issue, only to back out when his challenge was accepted.

Evidently, Duterte is losing everything – losing his touch, losing face, losing the presidency. – Rappler.com