“Dapat ganoon ang SONA, sabihin mo lahat…” Duterte preached.
Yet nothing but lies and hubris that defined his regime were uttered within his two-hour-and-46-minute speech.
Amid his imminent jail time and the resounding calls to put an end to his tyrannical rule, Duterte delivered his final State of the Nation Address (SONA). His speech did not stray from what defined his administration for over five long years: gloating on pseudo-accomplishments, blaming imagined enemies, celebrating violence, and brazenly displaying his fascist brand.
Despite alleging that a real SONA is a tell-all, Duterte failed to address the real and devastating state of our nation.
DUTERTE ON “FREE” EDUCATION
During the first minutes of his speech, Duterte recounts the “accomplishments” under his administration. First on his list is free education, alluding to when he signed the free tuition bill into law.
What Duterte failed to mention is how the Republic Act 10931 or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act was lobbied by the progressive studentry even before he took office— the same students facing a series of intimidation and harassment under his administration.
“To offer free education, it’s there already,” he proudly claims. The truth, however, is a far cry from what Duterte “remembers”.
Such a claim is an ill-informed take from an out-of-touch president. In reality, education in the Philippines is anything but free. The youth have long grappled with navigating an educational system that continues to be inaccessible. This rot in the system is not only exposed but exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The forcible shift to remote learning further robbed the youth of access to education. The demand for safe return to face-to-face classes keeps falling on deaf ears, with CHED endorsing flexible learning as the norm—a detached proposal from the students’ and teachers’ difficulties in dealing with the online set up.
Towards the end of the SONA, the president even vowed to provide “quality” and “accessible” education for all. This however comes without mentioning any plans for a safe reopening of classes and more so, changing the colonial, commercialized, and anti-democratic nature of education.
Not mentioned either is a reported 2.8 million drop in enrollment in basic education this school year, alongside a mere 36% enrollment rate in senior high school, according to IBON Foundation.
The fight for free education is far from over. The struggle persists, and it is not Duterte at the forefront but the youth and other sectors who oppose him.
DUTERTE ON AFP-PNP
Duterte wasted no time extolling the principal agents of his fascism. He admitted making it a priority to “strengthen the institution and boost the morale” of the state forces, boasting of the salary raise received by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP)— the same raise denied to health workers and teachers.
The dictator-in-chief also advanced the need for free legal assistance to AFP and PNP officers to supposedly “help them from charges arising from incidents related to the performance of official duty”, as if state forces have not circumvented the law one too many times.
The long list of extrajudicial killings testifies to how the Duterte regime has inculcated a culture of impunity. Duterte is misguided if he insists that the benefits afforded to the AFP-PNP are inadequate. The president spent his entire term pandering to the police and military to secure his political interest even at the expense of the citizens he is mandated to serve.
DUTERTE ON COUNTERINSURGENCY
“Shoot them dead,” Duterte once again proclaims, a threat directed towards communist elements.
Appalling as it is, this line is just as much a reiteration of the longstanding tactic of his fascist administration as it is a command. Karapatan reports 414 killed in the government’s counterinsurgency approach—211 of which are human rights defenders relentlessly red-tagged by the state.
It is then no surprise that Duterte had nothing but praise for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) who led this deadly red-tagging campaign. He spoke of rehabilitative strategies despite the heavily militaristic counterinsurgency approach in practice.
Duterte also kept the narrative of more than 17,000 purported former communist rebels surrendering to the government, despite multiple reports exposing these “surrenders” as staged. The Enhanced Community Local Program (E-CLIP) is nothing more than a ploy to line the pockets of military officers. Any counterinsurgency tactic that fails to address the root causes of the armed struggle is merely an excuse for Duterte to continue his killing spree.
The president may try as long as he wants to pin the blame on the communists, but history will judge him as the personification of the rot in the system that pushes people to take up arms in the first place.
DUTERTE ON DRUGS
Like what the five long excruciating years taught us, Duterte cannot live without mentioning drugs.
Despite desperately trying to resonate with the family-oriented Filipinos throughout his speech, it is undeniable that Duterte broke the most families through his bloody war on drugs.
Nowhere mentioned in his final SONA before his imminent jail time that at least 30,000 civilians were murdered in the “war on drugs” between July 2016 and March 2019, as reported by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
These cold statistics rest on warm bodies: thousands of brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, and children taken from their still-grieving families, denied justice as the culprit shields himself with an immunity suit. Children—even those only a year old—were not spared. The World Organisation Against Torture reports that the Duterte regime deliberately shot and targeted children in their anti-drug operations.
However, even a pathological liar goes off his script. Duterte himself admitted that the bloody drug war failed in eradicating the country’s drug problem, targeting only peddlers and the innocent ones while the big bosses remain scot-free.
Nevertheless, the blood-thirst executive, seemingly addicted to killing, will no doubt continue with his purge of the Filipino people in his final year.
DUTERTE ON 2022 ELECTIONS
As if his daughter Sara’s opportunistic pre-SONA zoom call with the House leaders did not suffice, the megalomaniac president wasted no time in seizing the opportunity to make moves for 2022.
First was his unprecedented endorsement of the incumbent Senate President Tito Sotto for the vice presidency, despite previously teasing running for the same position. All smiling, the infamous senate jester and plagiarist received praise from the president whom he floated as a “capable man” to become the next VP.
The self-serving executive, of course, did not forget to benefit his possible run as well. This time awkwardly serenading with lies none other than the bailiwick of VP Leni Robredo, Sorsogon City. Trying to win the Bicolanos’ hearts by professing love by false claims of putting them first before his hometown Davao, which he claimed the least priority among all areas.
Such claims, however, are nothing but the philanderer’s lies. Aside from giving his hometown friends high-ranking government positions and political clout, the lion’s share of funds for hospitals,“anti-communist insurgency,” and supplies of Pfizer vaccines went to Davao.
The favored city received the biggest share from PhilHealth back in 2020 for its public and private hospitals with one even getting higher funding than the University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital (UP PGH) despite being a major C0VID-19 referral hospital. Moreover, despite boasting its suppressed communist insurgency, Davao still received P1.64 billion out of the P4.3 billion allocated to Davao region by NTF-ELCAC—the largest of all regions. Recently, the city also drew flak for apparent prioritization in Pfizer vaccine allocation, receiving 210,000 doses compared to at least two other Mindanao regions that only received over 30,000.
Until the remaining minutes of his speech, he also did not fail in giving special attention to the errand boy turned senator Bong Go. Discontent from just mentioning Go’s name in his previous SONAs, Duterte invited the crowd to applaud his lapdog, to which Go’s fellow rubber-stamping colleagues obliged.
DUTERTE ON ECONOMY
“But what is the use of a public good if you are not good and stupid?”
Duterte, while ranting about being president in his almost three-hour sapping speech, described the hallmark of the economy under his regime.
While Duterte floated that he made the Philippines’ economy the fastest rising in Asia pre-pandemic, prominent economists begged to differ.
In fact, the country’s gross domestic product growth continuously faltered from 7% pre-Duterte to 5.9% even in 2019.
Notwithstanding a P11.071 trillion debt, the regime failed to address the inflation rate which reached 4.4%, rendering Filipinos unable to purchase staple foods like rice, pork, and chicken. The so-called lowest unemployment rate is at 7.7%, with poverty and hunger at an all-time high with at least 17.5% and 16.8% incidence rates respectively—far from the all-time low, he boasted of.
Duterte also mentions how he wants the Build, Build, Build (BBB) program to be “completed within his term”, continuing his misguided vision of the infrastructure program as the country’s path to development.
In fact, even in the ongoing health crisis, the Duterte administration proudly endorses it as its priority. The government has repeatedly claimed that the BBB program will jumpstart the country’s economy—a plan that is harmful as it is superficial.
The regime’s focus on economic infrastructures failed to account for social infrastructures that aim to address the genuine needs of the people. Hence, as the administration busies itself with its neoliberal ambitions of attracting foreign investment, the nation struggles with inadequate health care facilities exacerbated by the pandemic.
Moreover, the BBB spells displacement for over 500,000 Filipino families amid a health and economic crisis—the same families the president swore to protect and serve in his pandering speech.
Duterte also had nothing but praise for his tax reform programs, in spite of the fact that the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) and Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises (CREATE) laws merely served to benefit the rich and further marginalize the poor.
Far from being inclusive and creating opportunities for the masses, particularly the minimum wage earners, both laws—besides being enacted in inopportune times—were crafted in favor of the rich who saw their corporate taxes cut further. Meanwhile, minimum wage earners now have to carry the weight of goods taxed heavier than before.
On top of all these, P9 Billion was unspent from the Bayanihan 2 allocation similar to the underutilized Bayanihan 1 budget. Indeed, Duterte’s incompetent leadership will render even billions of funds useless.
Featured image courtesy of Noel Celis; edited by Jewel Christopher Politico
