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Philippines
Friday, March 29, 2024

Either or

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In Philippine politics, much of the fanfare stems from identifying which characters are affiliated with whom.

Such loyalties—not inherent rightness or wrongness—determine which side officials take on any given issue.

In today’s environment, for instance, it appears that there are two groups vying for the people’s hearts and minds: Either you are for the President, or you are not.

If you belong to the former group, your tendency would be to support everything he does and to defend him from criticism. Nobody in the administration can do any wrong, and everything that has gone awry is the fault of the other side.

Case in point: Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II now blames his predecessor, Senator Leila de Lima, for the fire that killed 37 employees and guests of Resorts World Manila. While it is not as farfetched as saying, for instance, that drug money was responsible for the gambling taking place in said casino, Aguirre said De Lima’s 2014 legal opinion prevented the Bureau of Fire Protection from regulating fire security in casinos.

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As a rabid supporter of the President, you will be deaf to the objectionable words he utters and and will always try to massage the message so that it is more palatable, more acceptable to the people. That—or accuse critics of being too stupid to comprehend the President’s real intent.

In extreme cases, you will wish bad things to happen to anybody who does not agree with you.

The other extreme is being against the administration, which could do no right or say anything proper in your eyes.

President Duterte, for you, is the worst possible affliction that could happen to the country and it is only a matter of time before he destroys us all. He will be everything we feared he would be—a ruthless killer, a dictator, an international pariah.

Because of this, you oppose every measure he brings up and criticize him at every opportunity—even as you do not have proof of his malevolent intentions or offer an alternative.

For example, some people oppose the imposition of martial law in Mindanao just because it was a move by President Duterte. Whether or not it satisfies the conditions set by the law, or is truly warranted given the lawlessness in Marawi, is not the issue.

These days, the country faces problems on numerous fonts. Part of why we have not been able to resolve such problems is because we don’t really debate the issues for what they are worth. Inordinately mindful of whose initiative or decision is being discussed, we fail to appreciate that government acts should stand of and by themselves regardless of whoever is calling the shots.

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