Simply put, a patriot is a person who loves his country and is willing to depend it, even against friends or allies, if need be.
Former President Rodrigo Duterte would like to be known as one. In the past, he amply indicated that intention, even his notorious war on drugs was, at times, portrayed that way. To be sure, it’s not just driven by personal or selfish motive, albeit it’s undeniably political. After all, no politician, by definition, according to Robert Reich, former Cabinet member during the Clinton administration, is pure.
In his book, “Locked in the Cabinet”, Reich wrote:”Their motives are always mixed. Ambition, power, public adulation, always figure in somehow. Means get confused with ends.” In politics, however, cynicism is par for the course. It’s no wonder than patriotism is sometimes derisively, condescendingly described as the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Is former President Duterte it’s latest victim?
The day after President Bongbong Marcos resurrected anew his late father’s vision, Bagong Lipunan now renamed Bagong Pilipinas, the former president called upon the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police to stop the current efforts to change the Constitution.
Is Duterte confused about means with ends, his or PBBM?
In a more damaging diatribe, the former president and, until his explosive outburst , a political ally, bared PBBM was a drug user whose name he allegedly saw in a report by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).
He, Duterte, said he could have done something about it, one way or the other. Regrets, he had a few and then again ,too few to mention, so goes the song. To late the hero or for the famous song. It’s useless to cry over spilled now.
Unfortunately, Duterte has conveniently forgotten who’s calling the shot now at the AFP or the PNP. The PNP has promptly denied the drug list tale. No such thing, said the PNP spokeperson. Could PBBM have ordered the AFP or the PNP a priori to make the denial, pronto?
Possible.
There’s a more plausible explanation, and PBBM offers it in a more civil, kinder way. The former president may be suffering from the side effects of a mental drug he’s been taking for years now. He didn’t say it, but you can read PBBM’s lips. It’s been widely talked about for years, anyhow.
As a friendly advice from a well-meaning ally, PBBM thought loudly that Duterte’s doctors must protect him from the ill-effects of such a damaging medicine. Was PBBM thinking at the back of his mind that Duterte was out of his normal brain function when he launched the infamous war against illegals drugs in his watch? Deduction is a powerful cognitive tool.
The former president’s son is insinuating that PBBM may have his own mental issue though. Duterte’s son, now Davao City’s mayor, reminded PBBM that once upon a time he pledged in no uncertain terms to protect his dad against the International Criminal Court. He didn’t say over his dead body. But it had the equivalent of a writ inscribed in stone. PBBM has changed his mind as rational minds often do, especially in politics, given Reich’s theory of impurity.
Now, it’s public knowledge that the ICC probers are in town– to find out who really were naughty or nice during the Duterte administration. Baste and others in the Duterte camp appear to be in a state of panic. No less than Sen. Ronald Dela Rosa, otherwise known as the rock, is shaken by the thought of landing in jail. What about his grandchildren, he plaintively, painfully asked?
Surely,PBBM must remember how Duterte paved the way for the burial of his dictator-father, toppled rudely from his authoritarian perch by the people’s revolution more than 30 years ago, in a sacred ground for heroes. Now he’s walking back on what seems to be a gentlemen’s agreement.Once, when the late Ninoy Aquino was allowed to go on exile to the United States, he was reminded of his agreement with the Marcos patriarch. An pact with the devil is no agreement at all, Aquino was remembered saying.
If PBBM has no love left for the Philippines, Baste has a friendly advice: resign. The father is harsher: he may be doomed to suffer the fate of his father and the rest of the family. Another people power revolution that shook the world in the 1986 may happen again. Those who forget the past, Santayana warns, are condemned to repeat it. Marx said history is tragedy first then becomes a farce.
Duterte may have a real sense of PBMM’s visceral, if not cerebral, fear of the past. The yearly celebration of that historic juncture is now deleted from the official list of holidays in 2024. Nothing exists in a vacuum. It is a turbulence and it brings back memories of a political nightmare. PBBM is no political masochist.
Of course, not everyone in the family can forget how the Dutertes have rescued the Marcoses from the dustbin of history. The president’s daughter helped him in no small way to become president. The grateful senator-sister is on their side and, not too long ago, screamed to high heavens that her brother-president be rid of the demons surrounding him. She didn’t mention anybody, but the public got the drift. The devil is on the detail.
It’s unofficial but unequivocal: the much-bandied political unity is over. For all intents and purposes, the honeymoon , if ever there was one,is over for the Dutertes and Marcoses. Cliches are coming from all directions. They have crossed the Rubicon, so the seers say, a point of no return, an allusion of the crossing of the river Rubicon by Julius Ceasar.
Historians say the crossing led to Ceasar becoming a dictator for life. Is the former president sick or sane?
