“AUTHENTIC leaders monitor their words and behaviors carefully to be attuned to their audiences and to enroll their colleagues and teammates. They do so because they are sensitive to the impact their words and actions have on others, not because they are ‘messaging’ the right talking points. [Herminia] Ibarra’s second critique of authentic leaders is that they are often locked into a rigid sense of themselves, much like their immature teenage selves. This is the antithesis of authentic leaders, who are constantly developing themselves to increase self-awareness and improve relationships with others. They don’t hide behind their flaws; instead, they seek to understand them. This lifelong developmental process is similar to what musicians and athletes go through in improving their capabilities.” – Bill George
“Duterte’s threat to swear at U.S. President Barack Obama if he criticized an anti-drug campaign that’s left around 2,400 dead, and the subsequent cancellation of a meeting between the leaders, “didn’t sit well” with overseas investors, said Rafael Palma Gil, a portfolio manager at Rizal Commercial Banking Group in Manila. Duterte’s behavior is taking the shine off a market that had been an investor favorite due to one of the highest economic growth rates in Asia,” Bloomberg added.
From once a country just a rank above Bangladesh, the Philippine economy grew under Pres. Benigno Aquino III to be ranked #70 out of 166 by the 2016 Index of Economic Freedom.
“The Philippine economy has been growing steadily at an average annual rate above 6 percent for the past five years. The government has pursued legislative reforms to enhance the entrepreneurial environment and develop a more vibrant private sector to generate broader-based job growth. Despite some progress, poor infrastructure remains a serious impediment to economic growth,” the index wrote.
We now have a president whose strongman actions resulted in a state of lawlessness and whose actions threaten a return to a ‘hyperlow’ for the Philippines, reminiscent of the Marcos years. During those years, the Philippines not only had professionals leaving, but forced many small business owners to become overseas Filipino workers, resulting in a 50 percent inflation rate and a poverty rate of 58.9 percent.
We pray Pres. Duterte realizes his words have power and when uttered from the pulpit of his presidency, his presidential words become policy and guidance for future behaviors of the national police, army and citizenry.
When his words are uttered, it has the weight of the presidential seal that they become default actions and later, of market withdrawals and labor expatriation.
Reuters reported on Thursday, Sep. 8, that Duterte’s war on drugs has reached 2,400 casualties last week, “with police saying about 900 people died in police operations, and the rest were ‘deaths under investigation,’ a term human rights activists call a euphemism for vigilante and extra-judicial killings.”
Is Duterte’s strongman leadership, much like the iron-hand leadership of Mr. Marcos’s martial law, keeping the lawless Philippine situation under control?
Inconsistent and unpresidential actions
It is worrisome when CNN Philippines reports on the Philippines’ presidential actions, and one gathers inconsistencies fitting a pattern of verbal abuse, broadcasted on print and internationally aired television newscasts. It had gone unchallenged, even as he hurls them against Pope Francis, United Nations and now a threat to insult Pres. Obama at the ASEAN conference. Some see it as authentically Duterte!
To psychotherapists, his actions fit the pattern of one who abuses his executive and personal power by cussing, accusing, dragging senators’ into revelations of sexcapades and threatening with martial law directed at the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Then, his spokespersons apologize and make explanations to diffuse the consequences.
CNN reported:
“In a press conference in Vientiane, Laos after this year’s ASEAN-China Summit, Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella said that the President ‘wants a soft landing’ in the settlement of the maritime row.
“’In other words, he doesn’t want to force issues. He knows that the arbitration ruling favors us [Philippines]. He is willing to buy his time to be able to talk at the appropriate moment,’” Abella explained.
“This stance is in sharp contrast to Duterte’s firm and sometimes profanity-laced rhetoric.
“Over the past several months, he has called the U.N. a “son of a b****,”joked about pulling the Philippines out of the international organization, and called the U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines a “gay son of a b****.” During Wednesday’s press conference, Abella himself described the President’s manner of speaking as ‘very colorful.’”
Duterte even told Senator de Lima, “You are finished,” and has publicly humiliated her by exposing her sexcapades, a very old trick in the book, dating back to the early 20th century. It is now the 21st century man’s power play, also known as sexual harassment.
Pope Francis was not even spared, the head of Vatican who just a year and a half ago, was revered by millions in the Philippines.
Meanwhile, some Philippine citizens (though not all) have justified Duterte’s actions, including Senator Richard Gordon who is set to file a Senate resolution to suspend habeas corpus in this drug war, equipping this president with even more power or what Sen. De Lima calls “creeping authoritarianism.”
Netizens list things accomplished by the Duterte administration so far, including my cousin who sent me a message: suspension of 10 mining firms’ licenses, deployment of troops to Mindanao, the repair of stairs in LRT train depots, the surrender of 600,000 drug addicts, police raids of shabu manufacturing plants, e.g. in a piggery.
Not rule of the jungle
But, the exercise of executive power by many presidents, save a few who presided over civil wars, is exercised with reasonable judgment and common sense. It is not accompanied by trigger-happy killings by uniformed police, or by vigilantes or hired death squads that in a president’s tenure of just 60 days, 2,400 are killed. I repeat, 2,400 killed, just 840 short of what Marcos achieved in his dark years of dictatorship.
“When diplomacy fails, warriors die,” said a U.S. general, who knows exactly the price of war in casualties.
By muting our collective concerns, we empower this current president to be a ruler of chaotic animals in a jungle, where we, as citizens, even if innocent, scramble to survive. No one is safe from the grazing bullet which ricochets.
Notice how a young five-year-old was killed in this spate of killings, to which Duterte callously responded, “I did not kill that child!”
And to balance his image and to show empathy, Duterte visited the fallen soldiers killed in their deployment in the South. But lives are precious.
We are precious beings created by God
Far from being animals in a jungle, each life is precious, as we are created to be God-fearing citizens ruled by the Philippine constitution, whose nation’s governance is carried out by three equal branches of power, executive (the president), legislative (Congress and Senate) and judicial (the courts). And a fourth power, the guardian of democracy, the media!
Yet somehow, we, the Filipino citizens, with the Philippine legislators, justices and the presidency have enabled a state of affairs of a weakened judiciary, by allowing hundreds of thousands of drug cases and criminal cases to pile up.
The presidency reacts to this state of affairs bypassing the weakened judiciary, including challenging the Chief Justice, by rhetorically asking, “would you prefer martial law?” and puts out a “narco-list of drug pushers” which includes four judges. That presidential taunting showed a disregard and a disrespect for the judiciary, an equal branch of the power of governance, like his executive office.
By not insisting on judicial reforms, criminals are free to murder ordinary citizens, committing their crimes in a depraved conduct — murdering them with impunity and throwing their bodies to further disregard the dignity of these lives.
While others justify this lawlessness, as necessary to win the drug wars, how about visualizing yourself as an innocent bystander witnessing this? Would you feel terrorized by your own president’s actions through his police and proxy killers?
Following a night market bombing in Davao with 14 killed and 70 injured, the president declared a state of lawlessness. The crime scene was immediately cleared, with the Abu Sayyaf claiming responsibility, and a presumed police investigation reportedly turned up a suspect, yet had not been broadcasted as apprehended as of last night’s TV Patrol broadcast.
The impact of president’s words and actions
Do we recall that the president casually said to his police force to kill by the thousands? We now have the result: “2,400 killed in 60 days!”
“’Let me tell you about human rights,’ the diplomat quoted Duterte as saying while displaying a picture of Filipinos killed by American soldiers about a century ago.
“’This is my ancestors being killed, so why are we now talking about human rights? We have to talk of the full spectrum of human rights,’” Reuters reported on the ASEAN conference.
The president referred to a photo, described as: “The March 11, 1906 New York Times headlines read, “WOMEN AND CHILDREN KILLED IN MORO BATTLE; Mingled with Warriors and Fell in Hail of Shot. FOUR DAYS OF FIGHTING Nine Hundred Persons Killed or Wounded—President Wires Congratulations to the Troops.”
Incredulous, others might say; while others question the relevance. Is our president saying he is entitled to follow the egregious examples of massacres from our former American colonizers?
Should we not expect our presidents, whether in America or the Philippines, to behave rationally, reasonably, respectfully and to prioritize the rule of law and due process? We do not expect our president to be a provocateur at an ASEAN meeting nor to contribute to this state of lawlessness by casually challenging his police to kill in the thousands and to not bother with the judiciary?
When we acquiesce in his presidential actions and this future suspension of habeas corpus including due process (notice to be heard and opportunity to confront accusers), we no longer have the protective “shield” that we are all presumed innocent until proven guilty. We are also saying to ourselves that we, Filipino citizens, are unworthy to have a leader who is decent, a world-class leader and truly respects the rule of law.
Instead, we are swept by the “win the drug wars” focus, to submit to this war on drugs, and to ignore those killed, either by hired death squads or by police in uniform.
By the time Mr. Marcos was done with his martial law regime, the Philippine House of Representatives tallied 3,240 killed, 70,000 imprisoned and 34,000 raped and tortured.
Edwin Batongbacal’s statement from San Francisco Kontra Libing Coalition and Loida Nicolas Lewis’ open letter to Duterte both attest to these figures during their rallies, held in San Francisco and New York, respectively, on Wednesday, Sept. 7.
Rallies were held concurrently, including Los Angeles, to protest Duterte’s decision to bury Mr. Marcos at the National Cemetery of the Heroes.
The rallyists contend that Mr. Marcos is no hero, given his record of violating the human rights of hundred of thousands of citizens and 90 million politically suppressed by martial law. His burial is temporarily put on hold by the Philippine Supreme Court until Sept. 12, extended to Oct. 18.
Long after Mr. Marcos regime has ended, three decades later, Filipinos are still dealing with survivors of wanton killings, torture, rape and imprisonment inflicted during the martial law years — also known as generational trauma, a burden to the psyche that lasts.
Duterte’s unprovoked threat to swear at Pres. Obama
Recently, Bloomberg Markets on Sept. 6 reported: ”The Philippine Stock Exchange Index fell 1.3 percent to 7,619.10 in its biggest decline in five weeks. The gauge has dropped 6 percent from a 15-month high on July 21, paring its gain this year to 9.6 percent. Foreign funds pulled $58 million from local equities Wednesday, the most in almost a year, and have sold a net $333 million in an 11-day run of outflows.”
May God guide our Philippine president and our fellow citizens to stand for truth, justice, lawful actions, and not man-made killing fields!
In our circles of influences, including our families, let us use our citizen voices to stop the free fall of the Philippines into the abyss of inhumanity! More importantly, we are more than killing fields in the Philippines. We are more than a war on drugs, we are a country where 45 million of our younger citizens need educational investments and jobs to become productive world-class citizens!
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Prosy Abarquez-Delacruz, J.D. writes a weekly column for Asian Journal, called “Rhizomes.” She has been writing for AJ Press for 9 years now. She contributes to Balikbayan Magazine. Her training and experiences are in science, food technology, law and community volunteerism for 4 decades. She holds a B.S. degree from the University of the Philippines, a law degree from Whittier College School of Law in California and a certificate on 21st Century Leadership from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She has been a participant in NVM Writing Workshops taught by Prof. Peter Bacho for 4 years and Prof. Russell Leong. She has travelled to France, Holland, Belgium, Japan, Mexico and 22 national parks in the US, in pursuit of her love for arts.