It’s easy to see that President Noynoy Aquino considers himself a macho man, with his well-known fondness for fast cars, firearms and serial dating. But in his choice of enemies, he seems less self-assured, preferring to safely insult women in wheelchairs and former jurists who can do him no harm to tangling with real-life bruisers like Davao City Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.
It’s no longer news to recount how Aquino has been once again on the warpath against Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and former Chief Justice Renato Corona. While Aquino was abroad last week, he solicited cheap laughs by telling jokes about how Arroyo is trying to escape prosecution on a wheelchair and how Corona and Arroyo will soon be reunited in jail.
In Davao City, meanwhile, Duterte was making news on his own, putting up bounties of up to P5 million in cash for anyone who can arrest, kill and decapitate a local car thief. In true Duterte fashion, the vice mayor (and former longtime mayor) promised to pay the maximum amount to anyone who can present him with the head —iced, so it doesn’t smell—of the supposed criminal.
The entire national bureaucracy, from Aquino on down, had no response to that. Aquino and his officials, from Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas (who also fancies himself to be a tough guy, the foul-mouthed version), to her supposedly fearless justice secretary, to the entire armed forces and the national police, to the various Malacañang spokesmen, just pretended that Duterte never said anything.
No one from the national government has demanded that Duterte stop acting like he can just put up money to have someone killed, never mind if he is a notorious car thief. No one in the administration threatened to sanction the Davao vice mayor, who is known for his anti-crime policies and for supposedly harboring armed vigilante groups.
Perhaps Aquino and all his officials are scared that Duterte might declare that Davao City is now a separate legal territory, without the intervention of Marvic Leonen and the Malaysian government. Or perhaps they are afraid that Duterte’s equally tough daughter, current Davao Mayor “Inday Sara” Duterte, will fly to Manila and personally punch anyone who dares speak ill of her father.
Whatever the reason, Aquino and his administration lost a lot of credibility among the country’s local officials when they didn’t so much as make a statement against Duterte. The message that Aquino and his suddenly scared officials is sending is that the national government can’t touch you, if you’re perceived to be tough enough to push back.
It’s possible that, with an election coming up, Aquino is just afraid of riling a local political family that remains loved by the locals in a major city. But Aquino seems to have forgotten that the national government exists in part because it should rein in local officials like Duterte, when they threaten to undermine law and order.
It’s also possible that Aquino is just plain scared of a real toughie like Duterte, who doesn’t need the national government to tell him how to run his city. And that, despite his tough talk and threatening actions, Aquino is really a bully who will cower in fear when he meets the real deal.
If Aquino is really as tough as he lets on, he would tell Duterte what’s what and send troops to occupy Davao. Heck, he could go to Davao himself to straighten out the vice mayor, if he’s really unafraid of a mere local warlord.
But the tough-guy image that Aquino is trying so hard to cultivate never suited him, really. Real toughness, as Rod Duterte probably knows, is made of sterner stuff than anything the cosseted only son of rich and powerful parents is made of.
Meanwhile, some people may be forgiven if they begin to suspect that Davao has relocated to another country. And that, deep inside, their President lives in deathly fear that his macho play-acting (as well as his incompetence in dealing with problems like the one posed by Duterte) will be exposed.
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So much for clear decisions from the Supreme Court needing no further explanation. For a while there, it looked like the tribunal just reversed itself, after receiving frantic calls from Malacañang Palace.
It’s hard to believe Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno when she says that she will “return the Supreme Court to its days of dignified silence when justices were heard and read through their writings, and when actions of the court were best seen in their collective resolutions” when the tribunal doesn’t even know who is covered by its rulings. That was the situation yesterday, when confusion was caused by a high court restraining order covering—it was later learned—only one of the co-accused of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in the sweepstakes plunder case.
After an announcement was made by a high court spokesman to the effect that Arroyo was included in the order stopping the trial by the Sandiganbayan anti-graft court, several justices themselves sought a clarification on the matter. The court later said that only one former official of the Commission on Audit and no one else was covered by the directive.
Dignified silence is certainly a lot better than this.
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