Deconstructing Duterte’s Superstardom
…Or ‘DDS’
Of course, the peso drop can be attributed to the rise of Rodrigo Roa Duterte as the leading presidential candidate for May 9. (For the already jittery, relax, there is this piece of contradictory optimism.). Of course there are hidden Duterte accounts, according to perennial whistleblower and Manila Peninsula’s favorite guest, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV.
This is, after all, election season. Black propaganda is as common as empty campaign promises. And with Duterte’s remarkable rise in the surveys, it was but natural that Every. Presidential. Candidate. would try to pull him down. Fair enough. But you wonder if the spook tactics are a bit too little, too late.
After all, black propaganda, at this point, seems to have little chance of slowing down the meteoric rise of Duterte in presidential surveys. There is palpable truth to this.
The biggest and most comprehensive anti-Duterte campaign is being waged by Duterte himself. He’s backing himself into impossible corners, PR nightmares and indefensible inaccuracies, leaving himself with one out each time: If you don’t like it, don’t vote for me. Simple.
And yet, voter preference has him leaving his rivals in his profanity-laced, violence-preaching dust.
Why?
The country’s intellectual elite — and the pseudo intellectual elite hanging on their coattails — are stumped, readily blaming a gullible, ignorant and mob-like herd for the rise of an illogical presidential choice. “How dumb are you guys?” the intellectuals ask. “The penchant for profanity and the open support for vigilante justice alone should already raise alarm bells!” The pseudo intellectuals label this fan base “Dutertards,” painfully unaware of the irony that whizzes past their comprehension at every utterance.
But blaming the restless mob for refusing to engage in intelligent discourse and hinging their choice on blind faith is performing an act of misdirection, purposely or otherwise.
Our voting history is replete with popularity surges of presidential bets who no one would even consider had circumstances been different from the electoral milieu. How does one explain, for example, the swelling of support for a housewife in 1986? Or the fact that a high school dropout made it all the way to Malacañang? How, in an election with up to two presidential candidates who were perfectly capable of leading this country, did we end up with Pres. Benigno Aquino III?
The popular vote was a reflection of the society it was in. In 1986, the country was fed up with a dictatorship and soldiered on behind the greatest anti-Marcos symbol to restore freedom and democracy hereabouts. When the crumbling remains of this dictatorship were divvied up by oligarchs and a chasm developed between the haves and have-nots, voters rode a wave of anti-elitism and latched on to Pres. Joseph Estrada’s pro-poor image. And then Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s administration, peppered with corruption charges, created a void that PNoy filled.
Anger fueled people’s desire to hit the voting booth after having dismissed critical thinking in favor of emotion.
The same is happening now, except the fuel is different.
It is desperation.
There is desperation not just because the highly touted gains of the Aquino administration are tangible only to a select slice of society but because its failures cut across social classes. There is desperation because the administration wants six more years of the status quo.
“But status quo is good! Look at the gains! Look at the gains!” scoff the intellectual elite, foisting their verbally manicured opinions all over social media from the comforts of their vehicles or Uber rides. Meanwhile, commuter after commuter is stranded in long queues before cramming into defective trains or death-trap buses. “But it is better to err on the side of decency!” they holler, pouncing on Duterte’s uncouth, unrefined persona to highlight the worthiness of the administration bet.
They can afford that luxurious thinking. They with the tenured income, the social status and the purchasing power. Meanwhile, a condominium gardener and a gasoline boy smile their way through 12-hour shifts, offering services beyond their job description in an effort to hold on to a low-paying job. Effusive greeting to customers. Fixing a condo unit’s faucet. Washing a car’s windshield. Six months later, you wonder where the familiar smile and greeting is. Gone. Buried in the cesspools of ineffective labor laws.
But that’s why we need six more years! To get to where we want to be!” Meanwhile, there is Mamasapano. There is Kidapawan. There is Yolanda. There is a beheaded Canadian. There is the stubborn insistence on one Abaya.
Anger is a terrible beast, yes. But desperation is a different animal. It is not easily tamed. Patience can calm anger. Ask patience from the desperate and guess what you’ll get. Anger can afford to be decent. Desperation ditches decency.
Anger is paying for an expensive cruise and getting stuck in a lifeboat after a shipwreck. Desperation is being the people in that shipwreck who are clinging to whatever floating piece of debris because no lifeboat was available. You think these people have time to wait for a swimming instructor to teach them the finer points of the freestyle stroke? Do you think they will remain patient as chopper after chopper passes overhead shouting to them to Just! Hang! On! Rescue is coming!
No. Desperation will claw and thrash at water, going with the current, hoping that it leads to land somehow. They don’t have to know that land is out there. But they swim nevertheless, because uncertain change is better than the certainty of their current reality.
Anger is paying for a three-course dinner and getting a street cart meal. Desperation is the person who hasn’t eaten in weeks and is at the farthest edge of a crowd that has gathered in front of a restaurant that promises a Free! Meal! Watch him slug his way to the front of the crowd. Do you think that person can wait for people to set up his dinner table? No, he jumps straight into the first emptied table to feast on whatever leftover scraps the previous customer leaves behind.
There is desperation over an administration that wants to extend its shelf life. There is desperation over the alternatives: A regime that promises systematic plunder and corruption and one that will be built on the ashes of a violated constitution. Of course there’s always Miriam, but…
Desperation is Duterte’s droves. And desperation is a monster created by this administration.
Desperation won’t always win. The ruling elite can always manipulate the results of this election. And it would mark the first time the so-called civil society would tolerate electoral fraud. Because the person it wants to defeat is the one that stands to benefit the most out of honest polls.
But even if desperation ends up losing, it would have already sent a message. It seems unlikely that jittery economic forecasts will spook voters into changing their preference at this point. If anything, the bandwagon effect might even convince the undecided to join this water-crawling with the current to a destination no one knows. I remember in Bush vs Clinton (’92?), a university undertook a study on bandwagon effect, polling students to find out who was voting for whom. Once the sides were set, the researchers gave Bush supporters survey results citing Clinton ahead by a mile. Majority of the Bush supporters changed their minds and voted for Clinton instead.
If there will be a bandwagon pull in favor of the Davao mayor, should the supporters be blamed? No. Direct your anger instead at the authors of this Duterte rise. Blame the current administration. Remember that Duterte has been a politician for decades and yet it is only in this administration that he became a viable presidential choice. People see him as a silver bullet? Can’t blame them.
As a sportswriter, I am aware of the indomitable will of the human spirit and the seemingly impossible depths it can fight its way out of. But there is a difference between not competing and not being given an avenue to compete. And for six years, Duterte supporters have been willing to fend for themselves but keep running into a gym that locks them out.
So before you knock Duterte’s supporters for their unwillingness to engage in intelligent discourse and preference for mindless, thoughtless name-calling, remember that these people were pushed to so much desperation by an uncaring administration that catered to a few, and they never really had a chance to pause and think.
