Understanding Duterte

President Rodrigo Duterte. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

I think there’s a need to try and explain the President because he’s getting quite a bit of flak, especially from the international community. The front cover of Time, a negative article in the Economist, and many others are not what the President or the country needs. They’re based on a misreading of the President but can do harm to the Philippines. Especially in attracting investment and aid. So they need correcting.

This nation has a very different culture compared to the West. The trouble is it doesn’t seem to be. It looks just like the US or any other Western City, but it isn’t. Below that surface its culture is far different. Ask yourself, why aren’t Filipinos outraged by the drug-related killings? Why didn’t society reject him when he made an insensitive comment about a dead nun? Why wasn’t he condemned when he blamed corrupt journalists for being killed?

How can he get away with lambasting the United Nations and attacking the US Ambassador with hardly a murmur, or apparently insulting the US President with no one disagreeing? In fact, they agree with him in the main. Ask around, you’ll see.

Take the response to a journalists’ question on how he would react if President Obama brought up human rights issues in relation to the extrajudicial killings. The President said: “I am a President of the sovereign state, and we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any master, except the Filipino people… you must be respectful. Do not just throw away questions and statements. Putang Ina mumurahin kita diyan sa forum na yan. Huwag mo akong ganunin. (I’ll curse you at that forum. Don’t do anything like that to me).” “Putang Ina” translated into English is “Son of a Bitch” or “Son of a Whore.”

It’s a figure of speech of a general nature. It’s commonly and frequently used in discourse amongst ordinary Filipinos. If it were to be a personal attack, it would be “Putang Ina mo” (You are a Son of a Bitch/Whore). Media, particularly foreign media, took it up as a personal insult because it made better press. It was a wrong interpretation.

President Obama understood though when he said: “I don’t take these comments personally because it seems as if this is a phrase he’s used repeatedly, including directed at the Pope and others.” But, if he truly believed that (not just being “trapo nice”) why did he cancel the meeting at Apec?

It’s a message to Duterte though. As President now he is no longer just talking to other Filipinos that understand what he means but to an international audience that doesn’t, so he has to suppress his emotions and kowtow to diplomatic politeness.

Mind you we might get more things done if the world’s leaders spoke more frankly and said what they really meant. It might be more contentious, but it would likely be a better world. Unfortunately it’s not likely to happen. So it’s he who’ll have to adapt, much as he shouldn’t have to.

Or is it unlikely? The world is changing, people are ever more assertively saying “we won’t take it anymore.” There’s a movement away from rule by trapos. The social media revolution is giving more power into people’s hands, and they’re learning to use it.

We can well say his style is not acceptable in refined society and in international diplomacy, but that’s exactly why he won. He’d seen the failure this conformity had led to. He wanted change and the people agreed. The people in Britain did too. Brexit was intense dissatisfaction with politicians and their arrogance to public concern. It’s why Donald Trump is where he should never have been. And hopefully won’t be where he gets, not that we want Hillary Clinton either.

I’m no psychologist, but to me, it comes down to ultimate frustration. The people have had enough of the corrupt, inbred, and basically ineffectual, as they see it, leadership of the country in the past.

It’s an awfully trite thing to say, but he’s a man who wears his heart on his sleeve. He really does care for the little guy. And they know it. So they care back. Wearing jeans and slippers is not an affectation, it’s the way he is. It’s the way they are. He has a natural and genuine empathy with them. And he’s a fierce nationalist correcting what he sees as a mendicant attitude of the past. He has a rough way of saying, and doing it. But Filipinos are proud he’s standing up and demanding independence and equality amongst nations.

But he’s very different from other Filipinos in one way, he’s direct “in-your-face.” For him, the niceties be damned, just get down to business. Just say it like it is, to hell with the consequences. Most often they’re just outbursts of anger against a perceived slight. They’re not thought-out policy pronouncements. The point I’m getting to is that you must just discount what he says. Look at what he subsequently does.

No previous president has had 76 percent satisfied with him at this stage of their term. In much of Europe today they’re lucky if 20 percent of the populace cares for them. That alone tells you something: Filipinos approve of him and his style, the international community needs to be guided by that.