Dirty finger

The original sin could still be understood and even forgiven: Davao City Mayor “Inday Sara” Duterte’s act of punching Sheriff Abe Andres for refusing to postpone a scheduled demolition was excessive but also comprehensible. She was venting her frustration. The sins of the Duterte family since the incident, however, cannot be understood except as the sheer arrogance of power, and is ultimately unforgivable.

The mayor’s continuing truculence, her councilor/brother’s insolence and above all their vice-mayor/father’s overweening contempt for those who dare question either Inday Sara’s turn to violence or the Duterte family’s brand of tough-guy politics all show a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of public office and the role of criticism in a democracy. This misunderstanding is symbolized in Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s dirty finger, which he angrily, even proudly, flashed on television.

A public official is duty-bound to follow the law—especially if she thinks she is in the right. If she can take the law into her own hands, by assaulting an officer of the court who could not be persuaded to see the reasonableness of her views, she is subverting the very office she was elected to.

But the Duterte family’s war on criticism—and make no mistake, Vice Mayor Rudy Duterte’s dirty finger was in keeping with his long political record, which includes six terms as a city mayor unafraid to make enemies or to vanquish them—escalates the issue, to accountability. To whom do the Dutertes hold themselves accountable? They will say it is to the people who keep returning them to public office. In truth, however, the family is accountable only to itself.

Whatever happened to Inday Sara’s rueful day-after admission that punching the sheriff was “not her best moment,” or her correct decision to take a leave of absence pending an official investigation? These nods to accountability have completely been swallowed up in the family ethos: Criticism be damned. We do things our way.

Hence, the dirty finger.

To understand the punching incident, we must acknowledge the element of sexism involved in the controversy. If Vice Mayor Duterte had been the one who beat up the sheriff, the outcry would have been louder, public opinion would have been less split. The incident would have been seen for what it really was: the abuse of power, by an official who was protected from any real danger both by the presence of bodyguards and the force of an intimidating reputation, against a lowly officer of the court.

It was only because the current Duterte in the mayor’s seat was female, and therefore not expected to physically assault another person, that a good number of people, even from outside Davao City, found the incident remarkable. Remove her gender from the equation, however, and more people will see the incident as in truth excessive, a local executive losing the power of reason, a mayor turning rogue.

To understand the dirty finger strategy, however, we must acknowledge the element of dirt in the Duterte political legacy. Davao City under the Dutertes prides itself on being one of the most peaceful cities in the country, but that pride comes at a steep, altogether unconscionable cost: the unexplained death of scores of victims of the so-called Davao Death Squad. This is a stain on the city’s reputation that has been brought to national and international attention again and again. To this criticism, the head of the Duterte family has replied again and again in his trademark way, with the verbal equivalent of the dirty finger: Criticism be damned. We do things our way.

That the Dutertes have been returned to office again and again has been taken as proof of popular approval for sometimes controversial policies. And to be sure, almost no one doubts the electoral mandate of the Dutertes. But what makes Rudy Duterte different from, say, Chavit Singson of Ilocos Sur? Would someone from Davao City care to defend the Singson family’s own brand of tough-guy, politically approved, electorally mandated politics?

Our point: To make excuses for political overlords like Duterte and Singson is to accept and encourage a country of enclaves, with the usual rules of democracy stopping short outside the city gates. And that brings us to the real root of the arrogance of power. When we think that the rules don’t apply to us, we are giving democracy the Duterte finger.