The favorite topic of most everyone these days is Rodrigo Duterte, and for good reason. He is the new President, and everyone is trying to “read” him.
While many of his predecessors were “predictable,” the new President is clearly too complex a persona to be stereotyped.
For weeks, he kept his newly elected vice president at bay. Detractors started sniping at him, albeit not too loudly as yet, about his not giving her a position in his Cabinet or even not meeting with her more than a month when both of them were officially proclaimed by Congress. When she was not invited to the Palace ceremony where the President would be inaugurated, that was not only deemed unusual. Some resigned themselves to cold-shoulder treatment throughout.
Then, what a difference a day made. They met at Camp Aguinaldo, briefly greeted each other. The following Monday, she visited him in Malacañang. There was warmth—more than just pleasantries. He mumbled something about her being “part of his government,” keeping an open door for her anytime. He even graciously led her to her car on the Palace driveway. People thought he was just being the usual gentleman.
But just a few days later, he called her up on the phone in front of Palace reporters and publicly asked her to join his Cabinet as Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council head, the same post held by PNoy’s vice president, and before them, Gloria’s veep.
The turn of events made everyone pleasantly surprised. In one sweeping moment, the man had banished every unpleasant thought about his being partisan against the woman who defeated his friend by a narrow margin.
The operative rule in trying to read our new President is this: Never presume.
In one of the early interviews he had with media, the new executive secretary said that to be able to get along with his new boss, he never advanced unsolicited advice. Wait for him to ask you, he said. The contrarian views he offered were often welcome, but when the principal decided and acted otherwise, the executive secretary found himself bowing to “superior wisdom.”
Rodrigo Duterte self-deprecates when he says he was just an ordinary student. “Seventy-five lang [school grades], okay na!” Many a national candidate would take pride in their scholastic achievements, proclaiming their summas and magnas to all and sundry. Others not so endowed would simply be quiet about their grades. But Duterte chooses to self-deprecate.
But surely someone who can disarm and dissemble, who can at one point instill fear and at another charm, who can capture the presidency from the “lowly” platform of a mayorship of a distant southern city with few resources and virtually no political organization, cannot be an ordinary mind.
Some detractors say Duterte is given to rash decision-making, pointing to his unfiltered statements over many a national issue. Think twice: is it rashness or calculated realpolitik?
Up to the present, people wonder whether his on-and-off statements on whether or not to run for the presidency was on account of certain obstacles or a display of brilliant political strategy. Whatever: The point is that when he finally went for it, he got it. Those on the other hand who planned and sat through interminable strategy sessions with every expert in town and afar in their desire to become president failed to defeat this “uncouth,” “indecent,” “trash-talking” political novato from off-stage.
Even the foreign community is unable to read him well. The American overlords first dismissed the guy as a flash in the pan, and they did not take him seriously, until by April, Foggy Bottom itself was getting signals from their own pollsters that the guy could be, rather, would be, the next president of the country they always took for granted.
His opponents thought they could clobber him with their machinery and their money. One very popular opponent was told that once the Supreme Court gives legal nihil obstat over her citizenship woes, it would be game over, and everyone, including the brash politician from Davao, would just eat her dust. But the wily mayor knew otherwise, not necessarily because he had political scientists and strategists surrounding him, but because he more than anyone else, could read the public pulse and temperament better.
The presidency unfolding before us will be an adventure in the unpredictable. Whether it is in foreign policy, where neither America nor China nor any other country will be able to predict his moves with absolute certainty, or in his war against crime and drugs and their protectors in high places, the new President will move with stealth and cunning, surprising even those presumed to be close to him. The guy knows his political chessboard well.
The operative rule in Duterte-watching, therefore is simple: Never presume.
Except for one: the guy is a nationalist. He will never sell the country down the river. He will always uphold what is in the best interest of his people. Like all of us, there will be trying times and there can be mistakes. But just keep the faith, and keep on not presuming.
