It is not a question of if and when.
It is not even because Rodrigo Duterte may possibly and eventually be indicted in the International Criminal Court. It is not also because his daughter Sara, originally not a respondent in the ICC case, was ultimately included as a secondary respondent after the ICC assayed the testimonial evidence submitted.
It will not be because even the son Baste Duterte may just turn out to be a benchwarmer after all at Davao city hall when talks, circulating since June, materialize that he will be suspended from public office.
The other son Paolo, already stripped of his P2B pork barrel as congressman, is now facing criminal charges before the courts for drugs smuggling together with alleged POGO financier Michael Yang. Paolo also faces graft complaints. Drugs smuggling alone will cost him the prospect of life imprisonment.
It is not because the principal Duterte bankroller Apollo Quiboloy is now in jail, his opulent religious empire now rendered penniless with more than 60 bank accounts and dozens of properties frozen by the Court of Appeals. The Jose Maria College has no more funds to operate. The unfinished 75,000-seat Kingdome may emerge as his biggest white elephant. Quiboloy is now past tense. For the Dutertes to associate themselves with a criminally charged person is a kiss of death.
The end of the Duterte rule will end not only because Sara herself may face impeachment raps as vice president, and if convicted will suffer perpetual debarment from holding public office.
We are seeing the end of the Duterte dynasty in the here and now but it is none of the above. For sure, all of that will emasculate the once untouchable power of the Dutertes.
Rodrigo Duterte’s vital dilemma lies in a very serious internal inadequacy that even his own children cannot fight because they are gasping for air in their own battles.
His chief political strategist and ideologue, Leoncio B. Evasco Jr., has been hopelessly impotent to produce warm bodies to unseat Marcos Jr. in a people power to catapult Sara Duterte to the presidency and restore the might of Dutertismo. As Duterte’s think tank, Evasco conceptualized and strategized the Hakbang ng Maisug rallies.
If the old man Duterte, now 79, has one foot in the grave, so too is Evasco who is now 80 years old. The Duterte dream of restoring itself to Malacañang does not have the luxury of time, much less of stamina and of bright ideas.
The former rebel priest Evasco was Duterte’s campaign manager for the latter’s first foray in Davao city politics in 1988. Widely regarded as Duterte’s alter ego, Evasco was responsible for crafting a grassroots movement for Duterte’s presidential run in 2016. He was his national campaign manager. Duterte appointed him cabinet secretary in 2016 and placed 12 government agencies under his supervision.
After the Duterte victory in 2016, Evasco organized in October 2016 the Kilusang Pagbabago designed to generate citizen-driven support for Duterte. Among its aims were to fight the culture of corruption ingrained in government, participatory governance to protect the electorate’s gains against elitist politics, and support Duterte’s war on drugs.
All that of course, easily went down the drain in six years. Duterte created his own set of Chinese businessmen cronies with largesse of government contracts. The fight against corruption increasingly became nebulous as Duterte rewarded himself with huge unaudited confidential funds, some of it going to rewards for extrajudicial kill quotas of police in the drug war.
Overall, the Duterte rhetoric of tough-talk bravado was not designed to see change in governance “by empowering the people in raising their political consciousness.” If ever it saw success, it succeeded in damaging the moral psyche of the Filipino by using troll-generated popularity. Duterte was exposed as a quintessential trapo whose aim was only self-preservation and entitlement for his family. That is the same bravado that Evasco conceptualized as counterbalance to the Marcos Jr. government – maisug (brave).
If the Maisug rally led by Harry Roque at Liwasang Bonifacio last August 29 was the gauge, the Duterte magic is now dead. Roque chastised rallyists who left in the middle of his speech, imploring them to come back because food had yet to be served.
Simply put, the people are not buying a Duterte return to power. The tough talk against corruption was a big dud. Roque himself is the wrong speaker for these rallies as one of the most hated personalities ever in the national arena. He now faces the grim prospect of charges for having allegedly enriched himself in office under Duterte.
The Maisug rallies turned to embattled Apollo Quiboloy’s sect followers. It boasted of making an “8-million march to Malacañang.” It never happened. Estimates of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ’s membership are only at the range of less than 200,000 members. Quiboloy embroidered so much hype and fantasy to garnish his false persona that he was the “son of god.”
The Duterte dilemma lies not in the break-up of team unity and the unrelenting attacks against his family by the Martin Romualdez House. His real dilemma lies in the bankruptcy of his political strategy that he and Evasco thought they could reprise from his 2016 run.
The question was asked how we fight for the end of the Dutertes without supporting the Marcoses’ desire for perpetuation in power. As you can see, all things rotten will eventually disintegrate. We just watch and see.
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
