The President’s recent moves

By Lucell Larawan

The law of attraction emphasizes that you attract those who have the same wavelengths. This explains why president Duterte is popular despite the proliferation of adventurous Bikoy videos and all the media rants of those who want him toothless. His detractors try to package him as a Marcosian derelict but failed. They cannot succeed in this tack, even if they put him in the same basket with Hitler, Mugabe, Gadhafi, and Marcos.

This simply tells us that Duterte is not any of those controversial leaders. He carved his own brand. In a country where many are brilliant, talented and self-seeking, we cannot expect the festering “democratic” leadership—though I call it elite democracy and depraved minds’ hideous devise—to work well. So the tired Filipinos no longer wanted the same neat, albeit, dirty tricks their former leaders had been known for. They no longer allow such leaders to take the reins of their lives to perpetuate national miseries. The netizens made a choice.

We just realize that too much democracy—the polluted type—can be the root of many evils. We see this in the US where the leaders cannot yet decide to stop the recurring mass shootings that claimed hundreds of lives because they put more value on their supporters’ opinion and what the gun sellers say. Insanely democratic–a repulsive one. Ridiculously, some US senators challenge the country’s sovereignty, pushing their repulsive brand of democracy, by revoking the US visas of those who allegedly imprisoned senator Laila De Lima.

The peddlers of this type of democracy want to import this idea here in dealing with drugs. And so they say “human rights for the drug peddlers” which also scream to most of us at the same time, though unspoken: “woe to the victims”.

Do many buy this idea? Based on the president’s recent approval rating in December by the Pulse Asia, where Duterte got 87 percent, most people approve the war on drugs. Justice has more prevailed and the good men mean the obvious: woe to the vile.

I trust Duterte’s move to cancel the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) because it frees the country from too much reliance on the US. It jumpstarts the nation’s healing from the Doña Victorina syndrome. The president did not do it without reason. He just responded to disrespectful US senators and the approval of the US budget that intends to persecute whom they perceive to be undemocratic in dealing with De Lima. If they want to interfere with our country’s internal affairs, they must pay the price. If Duterte did not nullify the VFA, we will continue to wallow in our self-inflicting addiction and self belittlement which characterize the syndrome I just mentioned. Tell me if we really need to disrespect ourselves too much for the sake of US aid. Tell me if standing on our own feet is not far better than what we use to know.

The president’s menu for the Maynilad and the Manila Water also indicates that for the first time, we elected a leader who does not just keep quiet for the sake of the lagay—a practice many has tolerated for a long time among our previous leaders who used to look the other way because they were expecting easy money. Duterte is firm in his stance that these companies cannot talk to him now unless they settle first what they did not give to the clients as stipulated in their contracts.

Duterte’s response to these important issues gives Filipinos more confidence. Too much reliance on foreign entities is a disease that brings low self-esteem. Also, kowtowing to the oppressive rich will surely cement the culture of corruption and continue the decades of reign by the dirty few individuals running the government behind the scenes. The President has decided with foresight on his actions’ impact.

Why believe the president’s critics who say what can only embellish their political ambitions?