On Target: A strong leader is what we need

The crowd that gathered at Rizal Park in Manila on Saturday urging Davao City Mayor Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte to run for President may be small (between 25,000 and 30,000 people) compared to previous religious or political gatherings in the same place.

But their fervor made “one’s hair stand on end,” said lawyer Bingbong Medialdea, a Duterte supporter from Davao City.

“The crowd was not hakot (trucked in), definitely,” said Medialdea, son of the late Associate Justice Leo Medialdea of the Supreme Court.

He said they came from all over the country.

The heavy downpour between 4:00 and 4:30 p.m., followed by a drizzle, didn’t make the crowd run for cover. They stayed on and listened to the people who spoke on the stage one after the other, said Inquirer sports columnist Recah Trinidad who was among the attendees.

Recah is a friend of former North Cotabato governor and sports writer Manny Piñol.

And to the crowd and other Duterte supporters who were not at Rizal Park Saturday, the feisty mayor has a message: “I am asking for a little more time, so I can do some final soul-searching with myself and my family.”

The message was read for Duterte by retired General Hermogenes Esperon, former Armed Forces of the Philippines chief of staff and a longtime friend of the mayor.

Voters who clamor for Duterte to run should not lose heart over his seemingly atras-abante, urong-sulong (forward-backward) stance.

Duterte has consistently said he doesn’t want to run because he has no money to finance his campaign.

He doesn’t want to approach vested interest groups and individuals either for fear of being beholden to them if he is elected.

But the nationwide clamor for him to run is such that he’s thinking long and hard about the matter.

“I don’t really want to run, Mon, but they should give me time to think it over,” he told this columnist when I said the call for him to run for President was coming not just from his Davao City constituents but from all over the country.

*                             *                         *

My readers and radio listeners, I might get into trouble with my publisher and editors for taking sides in a political contest because a journalist is supposed to be neutral.

But patriotism compels me to call on you to support Duterte because he’s our only hope to make this country peaceful and prosperous.

He has the political will to do that because Davao City is an example of his brand of leadership.

Duterte is so unlike former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, Sen. Grace Poe and Vice President Jojo Binay who are all salivating over the top post of the land.

Duterte is just interested in running Davao City, which he has turned into one of the safest cities in the world.

In his decades of being mayor of a big city in Mindanao, his name has never been tainted with corruption, unlike one of the presidential candidates.

We need a strong leader like Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, who transformed the city-state in Southeast Asia from third world to first world status.

Let’s convince Duterte to run.

If the clamor for him to run is loud, maybe he won’t be able to refuse this time.