THE BEST way to predict the future, American philosopher Erif Hoffer said, is to have the power to shape it.
As President Duterte prepares for his last state-of-the-nation (SONA) address on Monday, and waits for his term to run out, he sees – so does the public — power slowly but surely ebbing away from where he stands or sits.
It’s clear as sunlight that he doesn’t have the power anymore to shape it to suit his agenda or argument. He governed, so the general in “The Autumn of the Patriarch” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez was described, as if he was predestined not to die. With power, almost absolute power, comes the feeling of invincibility. What are surveys after surveys for that bannered Duterte’s unprecedented popularity after all?
But, ‘the uncountable time of eternity’, as Marquez wrote, had come to end.
The latest Supreme Court ruling has put a comma, if not a period, to Duterte’s strong-arm rule. It totally debunked Malacanang’s argument that it could evade an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over accusations that a crime against humanity was committed by Duterte in his bloody war against drugs.
The SC decision should strike fear, if not panic. YouTube is filled with stories about strongmen being hunted, captured, if not killed, and sentenced for the rest of their lives in prison on the strength of an ICC warrant. The possibility is worrisome enough.
The process in that direction has been initiated against the Duterte Administration in the ICC. No way it would work, says Malacanang, because the country had already withdrawn from ICC. No so fast, ruled the SC. Crimes committed before it withdrew are still covered by the ICC investigation. Besides, Malacanang alone could not withdraw from the ICC treaty without the Senate concurrence.
The heady days of populist authoritarianism are numbered, no doubt. The uncertainty of the future for a lameduck president is writ large on the horizon. What will Duterte say now on his last SONA given the new realities? It will be difficult for the President to talk about the government’s pandemic efforts because so much is perceived to have been badly managed, from the economy to vaccine. Even his soft, non-combative stance on the South China Sea issue will undermine his script.
But what else will he tell the nation?
His political morphosis has started, the lurch from being a lameduck to paralysis as sitting duck eventually. From power to paranoia, history has seen messiahs changing into madmen. The luckier ones are sent into exiles (Marcos from Paoay to Hawaii) where they look for self-redemption of some kind. Duterte is supposed to have learned from history. He will not walk quietly into the night, for sure. There’s still some fight left in him. He will go down fighting.
Duterte still insists on running for vice president to protect himself against those with bad intentions against him. But there is a potent opinion that stands in the way: it’s against the intent of the Constitution for a president to be reelected any other way. There’s a caveat in jurisprudence: what can’t be had directly can’t be had indirectly.
There’s also a growing consensus that the vice president isn’t immune from suit as Duterte himself promotes. So a vice presidential post, even if it hurdles the Constitutional bar on a president ‘s reeleection, is fair game for prosecution.
If push comes to shove, the Supreme Court, erstwhile perceived to have been co-opted by the powers-that-be, will say which way to go. It’s not infallible, but it’s final. At this point in the game, the SC may not be in a good mood to humor the man by the Pasig River at its expense. It’s tempting to say the High Court will junk the idea of a lameduck president to run as vice president, or that the position has immunity from suit.
It looks now that Duterte’s alternative backdoor route to power is kept in check by the Supreme Court and civil society. There must be a way, and Duterte will not keep his option to himself. The SONA will somehow reveal it, one way or the other. That should be the main dynamic that the nation’s should carefully watch for, because it will shape the 2022 political campaigns. Read my lips, crowed the late U.S. George Bush, the Elder in his time.
Sen. Manny Pacquiao, notwithstanding or because of his corruption issue against the Duterte Administration, is still a wild card. So far, he’s still a Duterte man, by his statements and by party affiliation. His victory in his forthcoming fight against a favorite younger boxing champ isn’t seen as a game changer. And the Duterte camp has shown it has done it’s homework to make sure that it’s not going to spoil the party plan in 2022, both as moral and political victory.
The judiciary is also not keen on towing Duterte’s self-serving line on anti-terrorism. The recent court dismissal of its anti-terrorism rap against – of all people—two Aetas struck a blow on any notion that the current administration can run roughshod against Constitutional guard rails on human rights.
The opposition has not revealed its full might yet. To what extent that might will come to be, anybody’s guess. The role of the US, a constant like the pi, is still without form, although its interest points to supporting a presidential bet, directly or indirectly, who will not fall for China’s enticement in the South China Sea. It has also made an early warning that China is using the cyberspace to promote its anti-democracy goal around the world, including the Philippines.
But, all told, democracy is still alive and kicking here. What Duterte intends to do about it in the last days of his presidency, should be carefully read in his last SONA. So much is at stake.
