Sixteen million Filipinos elected Rodrigo Roa Duterte to be their leader in the next six years, in a giant leap of fate never experienced since the Philippines began electoral democracy at the beginning of the 20th century.
The 16 million is six million more votes than Duterte’s nearest rival, the elitist Wharton-educated hacendero-class Manuel Araneta Roxas II of Daang Matuwid. Mar promised a continuation of Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III’s six years of governance. BS Aquino is also a hacendero, being part owner of the largest tract of hacienda in the land, the 6,400-hectare Hacienda Luisita, in Central Luzon, the traditional hotbed of agrarian-based communist rebellion.
Duterte’s 16 million is the biggest number of votes ever garnered by a winning president. It eclipses the 15.2-million vote chalked up by Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III in 2010. Duterte thus comes to power with more political capital than any other Filipino president.
Duterte is the 16th president of the Philippines. Digong is the first president from Mindanao, the first Cebuano since 1957, the first leftist, the first socialist, and the first local government official (mayor of 23 years) to become president. He is perhaps the first genuinely pro-poor and truly nationalist president.
He has promised to deliver on his promises in three to six months. Or he will resign or give up power to his vice president (at this writing, a tossup between lawyer-congressman Leni Robredo and outgoing Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr.). Or more extremely, declare a revolutionary government.
On paper, Duterte’s priorities look simple. In execution, the probability of failure is high.
The damning evidence of that failure is persistent poverty, which has straddled between 25 percent and 27 percent of the population, in the last 30 years. And massive unemployment, 7 percent of the labor force (or more than four million jobless), and even more massive underemployment (20 percent of those employed or more than 12 million people). Sixteen million Filipinos either have no jobs or are employed only half of the time. Are those the 16 million who voted for Duterte?
The Philippines is the only country in Asia which failed to halve its poverty, in 25 years. From 34 percent in 1990, poverty should have been 17 percent by today. Instead, we have mangled poverty statistics showing 25 percent to 27 percent poverty incidence, an obvious sign of failure.
With such astronomical poverty and unemployment numbers, no wonder the Philippines is host to the longest communist insurgency in the world, the New People’s Army, and the longest Muslim separatist insurgency in the world, that of the Moro National Liberation Front and later, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
Confronted daily by poverty, a quarter of 105 million Filipinos have to resort to crime and drugs to survive. Add the communist and separatist insurgencies and you have El Niño-dry tinder that could explode into a full-scale revolution.
In that scenario comes Duterte. He promises a stop to crime and corruption. In so doing, he hopes to end poverty and the insurgencies so that there will be what he calls “comfortable life” for most Filipinos, the 85 percent who he says are poor.
Duterte comes to the presidency preceded by someone who had so much humbug and braggadocio. BS Aquino III fed his people a fancy slogan, Daang Matuwid, and started to believe it himself.
Indeed, being the son of a slain opposition senator, Benigno S. Aquino Jr. and of a president who was considered the Mother of Democracy, Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, BS Aquino III mesmerized the world—the United States, Japan and Europe, in particular, and the credit ratings agencies. All the major credit ratings agencies were unanimous—the Philippines is investment grade.
But even before Aquino III, the Philippines was actually and intrinsically, investment grade. The agencies refused to extend the rating to the country under previous presidents. Why? Because it was good business for the foreign banks and creditors who were charging Manila a much higher rate than the country deserved.
But then the Philippines showed later it had no need for investment grade rating. It had surplus funds—the so-called foreign reserves which hit record highs. At the latest, reserves were at $84 billion—more than a year’s worth of imports, at a time when crude oil is half its previous price and the world is awash with commodities it didn’t need, because it was in perpetual economic slowdown.
In fact, three years ago, the Philippines lent money to the agency which was supposed to lend money to poor countries but ended up needing the same money itself—the International Monetary Fund. Manila lent IMF $1 billion, at giveaway rate of 2 percent per year, money that could have enabled 7 million Filipinos to eat three full meals a day for one year.
And how many millions of small businesses could have been helped by that P45 billion (the peso value of $1 billion then) lent to them at 2 percent per year? The going rate for small business loans is between 9 percent and 12 percent, probably higher, if you tack in all kinds of fees slapped by the banks—credit investigation fee, property assessment fee, notarial fee, even photocopying fees for documents, assuming the applicant gets approval. Most of the time, SMEs are denied these loans.
A President Duterte should be able to rectify such an injustice to the small businessman. He has a natural aversion to Big Businesses and their monopolistic tendencies and attempts to bankroll presidential candidacies.
In this country, he said in his speech recently, April 23, 2016, at Lyceum of the Philippines University, “there are only a few guys, the billionaires here in Manila, the imperial Manila, who could choose the president for us.”
Government, he notes, is the country’s biggest employer. Because it is the biggest employer, government officials tend to be corrupt. People approach them for money, for medicines, for jobs, for housing. Where do government officials get the money for such doles? From the government, of course. From direct stealing of taxpayers’ money. From cuts or commissions on government contracts to private contractors. From overpricing of government projects. From being in cahoots with criminals and drug lords.
“For all their needs actually, the poor, which constitute about 85 percent of this country, are really dependent on government people, so that people who are in government are forced to steal,” Duterte said at Lyceum.
“And those elected really take care of the elite. And this elite chart the history of this country!” he protested.
Duterte is unique that he is the first president of the 20th and 21st century who won without being bankrolled by Big Business. Initially, he shunned their donations. So he is not beholden to them. This should enable him to undertake political and economic reforms without being hamstrung by a debt of gratitude to donors, the big businessmen.
His first order of business is to expand the middle class, which is very thin in this country, if it exists at all. “The middle class is the fulcrum of society,” Duterte pontificates. Yet, in the Philippines, the fulcrum has been the government and its politicians backed by the elite of society. “That’s why our politics has been so messy,” he winces.
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