The Dutertes of Davao City, father and daughter, are certainly among the more astute politicians these days. That is why the father, Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, has kept on winning elections for two decades, and his daughter, Mayor Sara, will probably repeat his feat in the elections to come.
This is because they understand the present political reality, and they understand the people. In an ABS-CBN report, the father was quoted to have said:
“Is it really our fault here in Davao City if we are in a state of feudalism until now dahil mahirap talaga? As long as people depend on government and on patronage, the dispensing authority, the mayor and governor, people will always go there because they are elected. I suppose they are loved. Mahal nila yan kasi leader nila. Ganyan ang mentality ng mga Filipino. ‘Wag kang pumasok, army general. Tagain yan. Pulis? Na indian pana. Pagdating ni mayor, luhod kayo diyan. As long as poverty is there, (feudalism is there).”
Even though we have what passes as a modern Constitution, with three co-equal branches of government, mandating separation of church and state, proclaiming civil rights and establishing periodic elections, ours is still a feudal society, with personal leadership at the top, supported by a thin slice of privileged aristocracy founded on land and money at the next highest level, followed below by a faltering and disappearing middle class, and at the base by the broadest segment of society, consisting of the dispossessed, the unemployed, the hungry and the homeless.
Dazzled by visions of affluence flaunted by a modern electronic mass media, the hungry, homeless and impoverished masses seethe and smolder, dreaming of a knight in shining armor who would, like in the days of yore in the novels of Sir Walter Scott and the poetry of Francisco Balagtas, rescue a maiden in distress, representing the downtrodden masses. They come now in the person of crusading and fire-eating politicians, like the late President Ramon Magsaysay, carrying the body of an opposition leader tortured to death by a local tyrant. And so the Dutertes come to the rescue of residents being evicted from their homes under cover of legality. Sara may have shocked those who adhere strictly to the “rule of law” but she has endeared herself to the masses.
But the reality is stubborn. Despite the real-life drama seen by millions on television and discussed in volumes by the tabloids and broadsheets, the landless masses still got evicted from their temporary shelters. The right of ownership of a single individual prevailed over the right to shelter of the broad masses. Legal justice may have prevailed, but what about social justice?
The Dutertes are right: so long as feudalism remains, the masses will need a champion to defend their right to live decently, even if only in dreams.
—MANUEL F. ALMARIO,
spokesman, Movement for Truth in History, mfalmario@yahoo.com