Just being ‘Bondish’

Which would the country want: a bad joke or a bad government?

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Davao City Mayor and presidential candidate Rody Duterte uses gutter language spoken by the masses to convey his message.

In polite society, he is a pariah.

Duterte is hated by the squeamish and the conservative for his manners.

But the masses have become enamored of him because they feel he belongs to them.

Remember, the rich don’t elect Presidents, the poor do.
During the presidential election in 1998, movie actor Joseph “Erap” Estrada, whose manners the rich find distasteful, won right in their own chic enclaves in Makati City.

Why? Because the rich took vacations abroad during the elections or didn’t vote at all. Their maids, houseboys, gardeners and drivers went to the polling precincts.

The help outnumbered their employers in those villages, the reason Erap won in these enclaves.

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Ask those who have relatives abroad who among the presidential candidates won in the special elections for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs): Duterte, by a landslide.

You think they have not told their relatives in the country who to vote for?

You were probably born yesterday if you say those OFWs don’t have influence over their relatives here on who to vote for as President.

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I made a survey Tuesday on my public service program, “Isumbong mo kay Tulfo” (dwIZ at 882 khz on the AM band) among my listeners on Duterte’s “bad joke.”

My program is followed by listeners nationwide who mostly come from the masses.

Of the 100 people who phoned in their comments during the one-hour program, only 10 didn’t like Duterte’s remarks.

One respondent said: “Digong speaks his mind. He didn’t mean anything with that remark. He’s genuine. He’s a true leader because he’s not a hypocrite. He’s one of us.”

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Duterte was quoted out of context in the rape joke.

The rape and murder of the Australian woman took place in 1989.

Duterte’s comment that she was so beautiful and he should have been the first to do it with her, instead of the prisoners, was made at a particular point in time.

He was just recounting what he thought and said about the rape then, and recalled he said that in anger.

I remember a James Bond movie where the main character said “bon appetit” while his opponent, who fell into a pond during a fight, was being devoured by sharks.

Rody Duterte at that point in time was just being James Bondish.

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Under his administration, the Davao City Council has passed ordinances beneficial to women.

And if you attribute to Duterte the Davao Death Squad (DDS), a shadowy vigilante group, then that answers the question whether he respects women.

Among the criminals that the DDS liquidates are rapists.