President Rodrigo Roa Duterte. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/JOAN BONDOC
An opposition lawmaker scored President Rodrigo Duterte for being a copycat of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos and having a “Marcosian logic.”
In a press conference on Tuesday by the “Magificent Seven” bloc of lawmakers in Congress, Akbayan Rep. Tom Villarin said Duterte and Marcos share the same logic on certain issues.
Villarin said he found it troubling that Duterte believed he has to do something “wrong” to make something “right,” a statement the President made in response to criticisms his administration is not upholding the rule of law in its bloody war on drugs.
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Villarin also cited Duterte’s seeming fanaticism over Marcos, for wanting to revive the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP), a monument of the Marcos’ corrupt regime, and for allowing a hero’s burial to the dictator as a former President and soldier.
Villarin said Duterte takes a cue from Marcos for wanting to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, which Marcos did in 1971 before eventually declaring martial law.
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“When you talk about this BNPP again, it’s the proposal again that resurrects the Marcos legacy, in the same way that this administration has been resurrecting the horrors of the martial regime, from the Marcos burial, the BNPP, and now this threat of suspending the writ of habeas corpus,” Villarin said.
“In effect, all these maneuvers, all these policy proposals, this government is just being a copycat of the Marcos regime. President Duterte admired Marcos and his way of saying things, that a leader should do wrong to protect the people. It’s also a Marcosian logic,” he added.
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Villarin said it’s a “twisted logic” to even think that one needs to do something wrong to make something right.
“That’s a twisted logic. You can’t do something for the people using wrong methods,” Villarin said.
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For his part, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman said Duterte’s statement on wanting to suspend the writ only showed the President’s thinking process akin to the dictator.
“I think correct statement is really to right a wrong. This time, it’s the opposite. It’s to wrong a right. I cannot comprehend that kind of thinking process,” Lagman said.
Although Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III said the President was only “thinking aloud” about suspending the writ, Lagman said it only meant the President had thought about actually doing it.
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“It’s not a remark, it’s part of the moment, a knee jerk reaction. Thinking aloud means mean you have thought about it,” Lagman said. JE
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