IS INCOMING House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez pulling our leg with his claim that Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte was reluctant to join the presidential race (“Reluctant Duterte: He really didn’t want to run, says Alvarez,” Front Page, 6/16/16)? Does he believe that we, the thinking public, were born yesterday?
Are we now going to see a parade of spinmeisters telling us what a humble and sensitive man the Davao mayor is? That all that nastiness spewed out during and after the campaign was a display of humility and sensitivity? Were those of us who heard just dreaming about all his obscene attacks on the media—like when a reporter who asked Duterte about his health was in turn queried about his wife’s vaginitis? Is former president Erap Estrada’s remark about the President-elect being just a jokester an example of an apologist sugarcoating the vulgarities coming out of Davao?
Was the installation, at the entrance of Malacañang, of a large photo of Duterte wearing a barong Tagalog, the work of his image-makers? Are we supposed to forget that the President-elect had declared that he detests that piece of formal apparel, suggesting to the whole world that he remains like any ordinary tao?
Finally, should Inquirer’s Nikko Dizon and Tarra Quismundo, who reported about Duterte being “the boorish, foul-mouthed mayor of Davao City” (“Duterte men make a call on P-Noy in Malacañang,” News, 6/17/16), watch their back now for using those two adjectives? Or are they (and the editor?) confident that the Davao mayor’s fans have no clue to what “boor” means?
—T. E. MANZANO, temanzano67@gmail.com