Home-court advantage

Father and daughter—the former president and the current vice president—refused, because they could not afford to go before the organized—because disciplined and focused—committees of the House of Representatives. But while the daughter decided to indirectly confront her tormentors by holding a press conference, Rodrigo Duterte took a different path. He ended up facing the Senate. Not because it would be hard, but because it would be easy.

Ahead of Duterte senior’s appearance, I asked a veteran observer why it seemed that the old man was better at being bizarre than his daughter. While others have explained it away as the advantage of patriarchy—the old man can get away with language and ideas his daughter tries to use but to lesser effect—the veteran observer said it’s really all about humor. “The key to her dad’s popularity,” he told me, “is he looks and behaves like the majority but unlike them, he is ‘eloquent’.”

But, I countered, why isn’t copying dear old dad working? The observer countered, “Sara (like Baste) is not copying the old man, she is mini-me in character. The difference is she doesn’t have his comedic talent. So when the siblings become nasty, they just seem bratty punks. DU30 can be really scary but he spices his terrorism with low-brow humor so the majority feels good and loved even when he is scaring the bejeezus out of them with threats.”

But there is a time to temper terrorism with humor at the expense of one’s foes, and there is a time to be stern. The politics of it is knowing when to set one or the other aside. Jinggoy Estrada tried to clown around, only to get rapped on the knuckles with a schoolmarmish dressing-down from his colleague, Risa Hontiveros. Duterte Sr. knew better.

He has never been one to gamble recklessly; the only victory worthy of the name is a fixed fight. This wouldn’t be a “Thrilla in Manila,” it would be an exhibition match. The galleries were packed with supporters who would cheer and jeer. The hearing would be packed with obliging senators who would decline to ask tough questions, and instead, defer to him: ceding, instantly, authority and legitimacy to him; neither his unparliamentary language nor his statements would be questioned, at least not by Pimentel or Villanueva and certainly not by Dela Rosa or Go. What would be beneath even Duterte in this kind of forum, sneering, sly innuendo, would be done on his behalf by Estrada.

Taken together, they were enough to severely limit Hontiveros, blunt the impact of Leila de Lima, and deflect the testimony of Fr. Flaviano Villanueva. They were more than was needed to effectively sidestep the feebleminded attempts of the police to excuse themselves and their former boss (“he was joking” being the other half of the “I was only obeying orders” excuse) and instead, shine a spotlight on Duterte so he could point to himself, and by so doing, point to the nation.

He conducted four campaigns of liquidation. The first and most infamous was his so-called “war on drugs.” The second was related to the first: the occasional liquidation of local officials. The third was aimed at both the above-ground Left and the communist rebels. The fourth was not about taking lives, it was about character assassination and the political, or economic, liquidation of a representative sample of institutional enemies.

He offered a “grand bargain,” which had three aspects to it. To the liquidators, obedience would come with a guarantee: so long as they followed his orders and followed a simple rule—make every instance of a liquidation plausibly a case of self-defense—then he would use his power and prestige, not just to reward, but protect, those who were loyal. To the public, the bargain he offered was that he would assume total—moral, legal, political—responsibility for liquidations, absolving the public of any complicity in a process he never fully disclosed, but delivering an outcome the public would not only applaud but which it had deeply desired. They would feel, vicariously, to be sure, the intoxicating power of being judge, jury, and executioner, sharing the ultimate consolation of belonging to a cause larger than themselves: ridding society of vermin.

He would not yield, because, as Bong Go tried to point out earlier, the fearsome prosecutorial congressmen whom Duterte continues to avoid, had once, not so long ago, thunderously applauded Duterte with the same overwhelming majority public opinion that crowned the former president in his prime. In any domestic venue, his will be a home-court advantage.

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