It is not that our memories are short. Of course they are. But the problem is our impressionable minds – immature – that are prone to deception. Believing in something that is not true is part of the way we make decisions in our national political life.
If all four Duterte children – Paolo, Sara, Baste and Kitty were to go on a violent armed rampage, a collective juramentado, in the middle of Edsa, many would still praise them as epitomes of good governance. If in the thick of their violent orgiastic pique scores of lives would die in the middle of Edsa, the Dutertes would still be hailed as martyrs and heroes.
But the bloodbath is neither solely imagined nor existential. For it has happened in real life. And the trigger? It is challenging their identity shaped by vanity and disrespecting their conceit. That is the key ingredient for a Duterte explosion.
At San Beda Law in 1972, the truant Duterte was bullied for being Bisaya. The last straw happened in the school corridor. The corridor was filled with eyewitnesses: classmates, schoolmates and all. The crime was easy to prove. That wasn’t a deterrent for the show-off braggadocio.
The classmate he had shot – Octavio Goco – wasn’t exactly an enemy. In fact, they were fraternity brothers in Lex Talionis. But that wasn’t a deterrent either for the pikon Duterte.
Faculty Rene Saguisag recommended the harshest punishment on shooter Duterte – expulsion. That singular element from Saguisag tells us the correct penal way of handling a Duterte.
The incident alone indicates the very low tolerance level of Rodrigo Duterte when his identity is challenged.
In fact, he had given the go signal to his man Friday Bong Go to plan the assassination of Antonio Trillanes sometime November 2016. Duterte was already president at that time. A president is the chief law enforcer of the land. But the Duterte criminal pattern overrides – being president in full view of the Filipino nation, under scrutiny by the world, was not a deterrent.
Duterte had no single deterrence to kill if he wanted to. One day as Davao City mayor, the object of his pique was the priest Fr. Pete Lamata. What was the priest’s crime? Nothing, except that he bruised Duterte’s ego so much – Fr. Lamata was openly critical of the mayor. Not only that, Duterte believed that the priest was on the side of his political nemesis Prospero Nograles.
Duterte ordered the Davao Death Squad to kill Fr. Lamata. The assassin tasked to kill secretly hemmed and hawed. He feared killing a priest. The assassin was overcome by deterrence.
The Davao Death Squad was not really eliminating criminals. It also ran after Duterte’s perceived bullies. Even the bullies who disrespected Paolo Duterte were not spared. Killings took place at the mere order of the son Duterte.
The children have acquired the killing psyche of the father. Sara Duterte’s explosive tantrum to kill the Marcos Jr. couple is signature Duterte – there is no such thing as deterrence to them.
How therefore must the Philippines get completely rid of a family of killers? Sara must be sanctioned with a perpetual disqualification from public office as part of her impeachment verdict.
We the active public must manifest our collective anger at senator judges who will tend to acquit her. We have done that before. Tessie Aquino Oreta was never forgiven by an angry public. She never recovered politically. We must do the same today.
And hence I must march against the tide of her popularity. Leni Robredo said we must dispense with savior politics. She misses the entire point by a mile. In fact what we need is a next president who will commit to bring to jail the Duterte family and put all of them out of office. That is the salvation we need.
Killers are not to be taken for granted. We cannot be nonchalant at the sanctity of human life. Political power should never be placed in the hands of criminals.
Leni’s nonchalance is showing fundamental weakness on the Dutertes. One has to be the unbending and harsh deterrence.
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
