Ex-President Fidel Ramos thinks we are in a little bit of a mess.
The Administration is five months old which gives us, if you exclude the holidays, a fortnight to solve traffic, erase the drug trade, make peace with the Communists and Muslim dissidents, get Federalism going, take down the business oligarchs and terminate corrupt government officials; all the things the President promised would happen before the end year or he would resign. Neither is expected anytime soon.
We accept the promises as election talk. Just as Trump is not going to build his Mexican Wall, so Duterte should be allowed some hyperbole. Still, we should as a nation feel we are on the move, not up and down, but forward.
There are mixed results. Traffic, we are told, has improved although you might not think so.
Our conversation with the Left has hit a snag over the Duterte-endorsed Marcos burial. Communists are sensitive over Macoy and understandably so. The Reds were to Marcos what druglords are to Duterte. Leftists were extra-judicially killed then, druggies are extra-judicially killed now. Communists were the ostensible reason for martial law, drugs are the reason Rody is talking about habeas corpus. The Leftists -which include a number of Cabinet Secretaries- are apoplectic that Marcos is in Libingan.
On the War on Drugs, there is a palpable decrease in drug use and people feel safer as a consequence. There are over 4,000 dead druggies so we are on track to erase the 3 million still to go. However, there has been no prosecution much less dismissal of big-time government officials involved in the drug trade. A few mid-management drug traffickers –Jaguar, Mayor Espinosa- have been taken down but the higher-ups are still around and, when apprehended, treated with kid gloves and offered immunity. PNP Chief Bato De La Rosa seems a really nice guy but when he offers Mayor Espinosa his spare room to sleep, puts his arm around Ronnie Dayan and openly “admires” Kerwin; the public is confused.
To be fair, the Government has not nailed any big fish because most of them are apparently already in jail serving multiple life sentences while still going about their business. Be that as it may, the Administration should show they are suffering for their sins and not in Maximum Security luxury. What we have instead is an Administration that hails them as patriots for whatever salacious stories they can come up with against Leila de Lima. The lady senator may or may not be guilty but surely the War on Drugs is bigger than just her.
The Duterte Presidency has a vision but right now it is blurry. It should rethink its communication strategy, organization and priorities.
Malacanang’s current messaging is a substantial improvement from its cacophonous beginnings but it still needs work. With his penchant for mischief and double meanings, speaking what first comes to mind be it on Vice-Presidential knees or Obama, and snapping back at the smallest affront; the President is not helpful. The mature and sober Ernesto Abella, a former evangelist, is the best articulator in the Cabinet and he should be given sole responsibility for speaking for the President.
Organizationally, there is the sense of a scattered Government with each Secretary doing his thing. We do not see the juggernaut that was promised. Unifying the Cabinet effort is the management responsibility of the Executive Secretary but for all his qualities, Bingbong Medialdea is not an organization man, he is a lawyer. The economy is not one of the President’s strengths. He could use an economic czar who would direct and speak on behalf of the economic team.
The President has correctly identified the drug menace as the nation’s number one priority. However Duterte has gotten stuck on this subject to the detriment of the country’s many other needs. His style is to delegate and rely on ministerial accountability which is fine but the overall effort has to be conducted. Cabinet Secretaries are uncertain of their footing, are afraid of getting shot as messengers and are often blind-sided by the President’s pronouncements; so they do not move with purpose. The Cabinet –and the business sector- needs leadership and guidance and that is lacking from a President fixated almost exclusively with the drug problem.
And if that was not enough the President complicated things by adding foreign policy to the menu. I cannot recall the President ever mentioning foreign relations in the campaign trail but this has become, next to drugs, the centerpiece of his Government. Yet Filipinos do not care about foreign policy, about whether Americans mistreated us a century ago (Ferdinand Marcos mistreated us as well, how come he gets to be buried with heroes?). The average man wants a good job, an education for his kids, healthcare for his parents, a roof over his head, safe streets, good air and clean water. These are where the President should devote his energy, not in building a new world order with us as one of the three pillars of the universe.
A nation has many moving parts, certainly more than a city. National governance requires perspective, planning, priorities, an effective management information and communication system, attention to execution, and a commitment to process. If the President wants to realize his vision for this country, he might want to return to these basics.
Heneral Lunacy 