Trump II; Duterte, too?

Last week was almost bizarre with multiple déjà vu moments sparked by Trump II, the return of Donald Trump. By the evening of Nov. 6 (Philippine time), with canvassing in most of the US, it was clear there was no way Kamala Harris was going to win.

I texted a close friend, “I’m sitting in darkness” and went to bed. I woke up to emails from friends in the States grieving, in despair.

The question both in 2016 (Trump’s first victory) and in 2024 (Trump II) was simple: how could someone as foul-mouthed, as vulgar and disrespectful (the Filipino word “bastos” says it all), as ignorant as Trump (he has called climate change a hoax) even come close to winning?

But win he did, a feat repeated in 2024 with a Trump who had deteriorated through the years with vitriol and anger and bitterness over his loss in 2020, more anti-women and racist than ever. Even more astounding, here was a man who had been convicted only recently on 34 felony counts around falsification in business, and for sexual abuse, with a string of pending cases around tax evasion, election subversion, fraud. He has sworn, during the campaign, to retaliate against those who had “persecuted” him.

But again, we’ve seen all this before in the Philippines. We have to remember that Duterte was voted president in 2016, a few months before Trump’s first victory. He was, in many instances, more foul-mouthed, more anti-women, more arrogant than Trump. His opponent was Manuel Roxas of the Liberal Party; the same party of Noynoy Aquino, whose presidency was marked by accomplishments such as economic recovery and the conclusion of a peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Alas, people were more prone to remember the many serious lapses that mattered at the gut level. Just one glaring example, the deterioration of Metro Manila’s mass rail transit, with millions of Filipinos reminded at least twice a day—going to and returning from work—about a government that didn’t seem to care: the endlessly long queues, the jampacked trains, the pickpockets, and more.

We forget, too, that with so many Filipinos working overseas, our situation stood in stark contrast to Asia’s other clean and efficient mass transit, all of which were started later than the Philippines’. We lagged in mass transport, as we did in education, science, technology, and, quite simply, caring for our citizens.

Americans felt that way too about Biden and the Democrats, from the still ailing economy to crime in the streets.

As with Trump, Duterte capitalized on our deteriorating peace and order situation, particularly around drugs. He swore to kill the drug addicts, which was really pretty much his “legacy,” a bloody one with many innocent lives lost in the crossfire. He recently admitted, boasted, he had created death squads, arguing they did not involve the police.

Will there be a Duterte II? Not the former president but the daughter, Sara, clearly waits in the wings, still nursing her wounds after breaking ranks with Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and being accused of many irregularities, but she still recklessly lashes out, driven by rage and a sense of impunity. She knows she still has popular support and can recover, using her post as Vice President.

In 2022, we already had a taste of Duterte II in the making. We had Leni Robredo, vice president, too, but rendered ineffectual, reviving calls for human rights and human decency, but she lost to Marcos Jr. When you think about it, that was déjà vu too, reminiscent of his father’s reelection in 1969, but that’s too distant in history for most Filipinos. Marcos Jr. seems to have learned from history, still trying to revise history but also setting up a cleaner record of accomplishments.

We have to prepare for our elections of 2025 and, even more importantly in 2028. Human rights and democracy, now more than ever, needs to be discussed, attuned to the realities of day-to-day survival, convincing people that the silence of graves and dumping sites of extrajudicial killings, and the muting of voices of dissent (our last bastion against corruption) are not peace and order. Conversely, we need to have people need to feel security in terms of homes, education, food, health care, and yes, transport.

The arenas for discussing these issues have shifted—Trump went into podcasts, his 18-year-old son Barron said to have selected the ones that count for young Americans. We need courage to enter the labyrinths of websites and social media platforms in the Philippines, where disinformation reigns and the Armageddon unfolds.

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