“Like HBO’s blockbuster Game of Thrones, set in medieval times where feudalism was the rule, characters are eerily similar”
THIS is war, between the forces of the administration huddled under the leadership of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. versus those who are loyal to the ailing and imprisoned patriarch of the House of Duterte.
It is rather lopsided. In modern warfare, he who has the resources, namely, materiel and manpower gets the upper hand, quite difficult to engage. Out of power, the Davao forces can rely on limited resources, and its base of strength where enraged supporters are legion is quite far from the center of power.
Worse, the highly revered patriarch is in a faraway country, alone in a small cell amid a dark and damp environment, where his aging bones are unaccustomed to cold. The combination of solitude and harsh environs would be harsh on the health of the patriarch.
The masses are angry. Spontaneously, here and in the countries of their diaspora, they have rallied in anger at the manner by which their beloved leader was treated by a supposed political ally who flouted sovereignty for immediate gain — getting physically rid of its greatest enemy.
This war will be fought across many battles over several fronts. Some of the forthcoming battles have predictable timelines and theaters of war. Some we have yet to divine.
On the propaganda front, the patriarch’s loyalists decry injustice and the surrender of national sovereignty, while the administration and its allies keep recalling the human rights violations and the killing of innocents during the latter’s war against drugs and crime.
Like HBO’s blockbuster Game of Thrones, set in medieval times where feudalism was the rule, characters are eerily similar.
The setting as well, for while the country is supposedly a democracy in form, that provides little substance for an impoverished population governed not by a genuine rule of law, but by the manipulative actions of entrenched political dynasties fueled in their ambition by oligarchs who control its economy.
Though centuries apart, the feudal system lives on in the benighted land.
This writer has been wondering who the resident “Rasputin” in the palace is.
The initial battle in hot Villamor and the flight to cold Scheveningen points to a former trusted general who was in the “privy” council of the imprisoned patriarch and now has the younger leader’s ear.
Lanister in the Game of Thrones he plays in today’s war of the clans.