Duterte seen breaking traditions

Surrounded with security personnel, President-elect Rodrigo Duterte leaves the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City after meeting his incoming cabinet members for the first time outside Davao City. RICHARD A. REYES

FROM his venue of choice to the magistrate he picked to administer his oath, incoming President-elect Rodrigo Duterte will be breaking traditions in his inauguration.

Duterte will take his oath at  Malacañang before a schoolmate and fraternity brother on June 30, in austere rites seen as historic.

Duterte, the first politician from Mindanao to be elected President and the first city mayor to jump straight to the highest office in the land, will be sworn in as the country’s 16th President by Supreme Court Associate Justice Bienvenido Reyes, according to the Davao City mayor’s executive assistant, Christopher Go.

Go did not specify Duterte’s reason for his choice, but both Reyes and Duterte are graduates of San Beda College of Law. They are also members of the same fraternity, Lex Talionis.

Duterte had earlier appointed schoolmates to his Cabinet: Vitaliano Aguirre as secretary of justice and Arthur Tugade as transportation and communications secretary.

Presidents traditionally take their oath of office before the Chief Justice. But President Aquino famously broke tradition in 2010 when he took his oath of office before then Supreme Court Associate Justice Conchita Carpio Morales  in  protest against what he believed was the midnight appointment of then Chief Justice Renato Corona.

But Mr. Aquino kept the tradition of being inaugurated at  Quirino Grandstand in Rizal Park.

Malacañang rites

Duterte is the first to break that tradition since Vice President Carlos P. Garcia, who first assumed the presidency  through succession following the sudden death of President Ramon Magsaysay. He took his oath on March 17, 1957, in the Council of State Room at Malacañang’s Executive Building.

Duterte’s inauguration will be held at Rizal Hall, the largest room in the Palace where special state events are held.

The President-elect has refused to be inaugurated together with Vice President-elect Leni Robredo, who belongs to a different political party.

But former Senate President Aquilino Pimentel Jr. on Friday said Duterte and Robredo should be jointly inaugurated as a symbol of unity after the highly divisive national elections.

“It will relay the message to the people that the President and the Vice President, even if they belong to different parties, have one common goal and that is the good of the people,” Pimentel, chair emeritus of Duterte’s party, Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban), told reporters.

Incoming Presidential Communications Operations Office head Martin Andanar said Cabinet members would take their oaths together during Duterte’s inauguration.

‘Maruya,’ coco juice

Up to 500 guests, including foreign diplomats and lawmakers, will be invited to the event.

Andanar said maruya—fried battered cardava banana—and coconut juice would be served for snacks.

He said Duterte’s speech was already being prepared, and that the incoming President might use a teleprompter. The longtime mayor of Davao City is used to speaking extemporaneously and is notorious for profanity-laced rhetoric. With a report from Jovic Yee