Duterte stunts always cover up bad news

We all know that Duterte’s most outrageous stunts happen when 1) there’s baaaaaad news for Filipinos; 2) there’s baaaaaad news for him.
We get a daily dose of bad news: Skyrocketing prices and insensitivity from officials are just for starters.
To fight inflation, they want unlimited importation. It won’t liberate consumers – because they’re piling on more taxes. It will KILL FARMERS and make the big traders (and smugglers) very happy.
To fill government coffers, they will expand mining operations. That WILL kill people in the countryside. And that will kill the environment.
We’re having even more bad news next year. We don’t know how high prices will rise and how low the peso will go. And, given frenzied election spending, inflation is bound to get worse.
We do know that the promise of creating more jobs – contractual and low-paying – isn’t going to be much of a buffer. It’s not even causing much excitement from the sectors they want to woo.

We do know the regime will be facing massive unrest among state workers with its grand endo plan, a plan that will almost certainly benefit private firms w access to government bigwigs.
What’s bad news for Duterte: an antsy business sector that hesitates to invest;
a country like Israel – no slouch in human rights violations – balking at the idea of closer law enforcement cooperation with a man whose benchmark of success is Hitler; and
the US State Department’s startling criticism of martial law in Mindanao, probably linked to Duterte’s plan to gift Marawi to his Chinese masters. The US, already angry over the West Philippine Sea, isn’t happy to see China muscling into their old, happy hunting grounds.
Trillanes
The plot against Senator Antonio Trillanes, which pretty much dovetails with the Quo Warranto ouster against Chief Justice Sereno, was already being hatched a year ago.
Only idiots, of course, would hurl claims easily trashed by public documents.
Only idiots would presume that attempts to hide documents would really keep these away from the public or the target, – especially a former military officer whose legislative agenda still favours the AFP ( sometimes at the expense of human rights).
But these are idiots with some cunning, who believe in twisting legalities and logic so these resemble a pretzel after one of Duterte’s tantrums.
With the Senate, even Sotto, standing pat against the arrest of Trillanes, I doubt there will be any rambo-type raid.
Legal fiction
The government can wait because it has a powerful weapon – the Court, specifically the tame justices that now occupy key positions in accountability bodies.
That was always the reason for the ouster of Sereno because Duterte, like Marcos before him, wants a veneer if legitimacy, however thin, for his actions – whether the Marcos burial, martial law or charter change or some other form of emergency rule.
Trillanes will be at the mercy of a Supreme Court stacked to favour Duterte. That’s where the danger lies.
Efforts to impeach justices are not going have much value except for media mileage.
Venal legislators are already wringing their pudgy hands with excitement over the goodies promised by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the prospect of pork padding their campaign vaults.
However ridiculous the SC decisions will be in the coming days, they will hail those now low-lying fruits. An AFP sated with perks will gladly do its bidding. Because, hey, it will never be just Trillanes. The hundreds of activists now in jail and now in the ground will have plenty of company in the coming months.
Time
An ailing Duterte is fighting for time, wondering how much is left to install the dictator’s son in power and/or a junta, which is more likely.
He knows Filipinos (sadly) can stomach outrageous human rights violations.
He knows they will rise up when their stomachs and other basic needs are threatened. He can’t do much there because he was always in bed with the oligarchs; he can’t see beyond gratifying his urges.
He’ll give up substantial parts of his federalist promise and ease disappointments with even more stunts taken from the playbook of Arroyo.
He won’t give up TRAIN. And he will find a way to open up the country to his foreign patrons from opposite sides of the world.
He won’t be able to do that without facing massive protests. That’s what Arroyo and the bevy of security advisers are for (including those strangely being repackaged as heroes).
As the darkness on his face spreads, Duterte will be at his most dangerous.
