CORRUPTION & INCOMPETENCE: PHARMALLY SCANDAL & DUTERTE LEGACY

“Ombudsman suspends 33 gov’t officials over Pharmally mess” (GMA News Online)

“Ombudsman told: Get Pharmally scam brains” (Inquirer)

The twin headlines above are a microcosm that speaks volumes of PH’s state of affairs during Former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte (FPRRD)’s reign. Derived from the political stratagem of “continuity,” such a state of affairs is now entrenched under Marcos Jr.'s administration by dint of the political dynasties that banded together to win the last presidential election.

Let’s spotlight the keywords marking the boundaries of the vastness of the whole shebang.

“Mess,” “scam” implies the Pharmally mess is so crooked that it appears indistinguishable from a scam modus operandi.

“Suspends” signals a preemptive first step to prevent government officials and employees from interfering with or influencing an investigation.

“33 gov’t officials”: each preventable corruption is one corrupt official too many; 33 officials, too scummy.

“Brains” spells out that the financier and backer of the poorly-capitalized (measly P625K paid-up capital yet cornered P42-B deal) Pharmally, Michael Yang – a friend and former adviser of then FPRRD who defended Pharmally during the Senate investigation – says a lot.

“Who you are is who you attract,” wrote John C. Maxwell, author of The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.

 BACKDROP: FPRRD BALLGAME

The election of FPRRD in 2016 marked a consequential turning point in PH’s political landscape. Dubbed The Punisher gracing the Time Magazine’s cover, he ran on a platform that promised to eradicate the drug problem by any means necessary.

Iris Gonzales in her Philstar column Gross domestic hatred reopened old wounds of FPRRD’s controversial quotes – a chunk of The New York Times’ Rodrigo Duterte’s Most Contentious Quotations list.

“On drug addicts: ‘Hitler massacred 3 million Jews… there are 3 million drug addicts… I’d be happy to slaughter them.’”

“On how he would explain the drug war to Barack Obama: ‘Son of a whore, I will curse you in that forum.’”

“On criminals: ‘If you are corrupt, I will fetch you using a helicopter to Manila and I will throw you out. I have done this before. Why would I not do it again?’”

“On Pope Francis’ visit to Manila in 2016 which caused traffic: ‘I wanted to call him: ‘Pope, son of a whore, go home. Do not visit us again.’”

Despite such controversial statements he burst out on world stage, and with his lack of national political experience, FPRRD won a landslide victory, largely due to his populist appeal and promises of change.

Let me bring up a scarcely tackled sneaking suspicion which might have pitched into his victory. Of late, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a press release about a pro-Trump social media influencer, Douglass Mackey, aka Ricky Vaughn, who allegedly exploited a social media platform to infringe one of the most basic and sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution: the right to vote. He is being charged with 2016 election interference for urging Hillary Clinton supporters to vote by text, which was not valid, hence “vaporizing” their votes.

Interestingly, testifying in the case, one notorious Twitter troll known as “Microchip,” the Daily News reported, described his striking election campaign tactic through humor: “When people are laughing, they are very easily manipulated.” Whoa!

AGGRESSIVE HUMOR

Did it ever occur to us that FPRRD’s contentious quotes not only were controversial, but also hyperbolic, and could be categorized as “aggressive humor”? For sure, it is a harmful form of humor that is focused on hurting others by insulting, ridiculing, or teasing them -- according to the National Library of Medicine’s article The Dark Side of Humor: DSM-5 Pathological Personality Traits and Humor Styles.

In some corners of our political surroundings, just as FPRRD’s aggressive humor could have sucked up to the psyche of the anti-U.S. voting pack by thrash-talking Obama, so too could it have made a hit with the mindset of the anti-Catholic voting block by mocking the Pope.

And who would not be wowed by his fire in the belly to wipe out both the drug addict “zombies” (FPRRD's pejorative tag) and the spine-chilling criminals, as improbable as it may seem, in a hubristic Rambo-like mission-impossible on his high horse?

Lots of literature chimes in with our scrutiny. The study “Laughing out of the box” by Dolinski, Gromski, and Zawisza investigated the effects of humor on memory. One experiment found that humorous ads were remembered better than non-humorous ones. In a seminal article Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences, Robert Zajonc argues that people’s preferences for stimuli can be influenced by their emotional reactions to those stimuli without the need for conscious thought or inferences. That Zajonc’s statement fits like a glove with the “Microchips” troll’s tactic: “When people are laughing, THEY ARE VERY EASILY MANIPULATED” without their "conscious thought or inferences." (Underscoring mine)

FAILURE TO THINK

Here’s the fits-like-a-glove bad news: It squares with the grim words of Dr. M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled.

“One of the major dilemmas we face as individuals and as a society is simplistic thinking – or THE FAILURE TO THINK AT ALL. It is not a problem; it is THE problem.” (Underscoring mine)

Let me quote Jose Ma. Montelibano’s words excerpted from his Inquirer column “Quo Vadis, Pilipinas” series:

“The path forward is our choice, whatever that may be. We can choose to be rightly informed or we can choose to gloss over lies and fakery… In a world beset by turbulence and disruptions, it is our time to change ourselves, to prepare for the worst, and be worthy of the best.”

The lessons learned from Duterte’s presidency are clear: we, Pinoy voters, must be vigilant and proactive in ensuring the integrity of the electoral process. Election interference, by the likes of Cambridge Analytica, should serve as a wake-up call for the need to strengthen the country’s cybersecurity measures and ensure the Comelec independence. Moreover, we must prioritize competence and integrity in choosing our leaders and must hold them accountable for their actions.

We need to address the root causes of our country’s problems, such as poverty and lack of access to education and health care. The war on drugs, while initially popular, has proven to be a disastrous failure, with little to no impact on the drug problem. A more holistic and evidence-based approach to drug policy is needed benchmarked on countries with best drug policies according to Global Drug Policy Index. (Exhibit A: Norway, Exhibit B: New Zealand, Exhibit C: Portugal, among others.) The venerable Emil Jurado’s Manila Standard column banner says it all: “Why Duterte’s war on illegal drugs a big failure.”

George Santayana, a Spanish philosopher, and writer, once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The quote holds for many nations, including ours, which could not even agree, sad to say, what to remember in some phases of our history. Marred by controversy, corruption, and human rights abuses, FPRRD’s presidency is a stark reminder of the recent past which we, the Filipino people, must think through such legacy and the lessons learned.

Only then can our nation move forward toward an upright and booming future.

Head still collage photos courtesy of freepikdotcom