YEAR-END TAKE: FPRRD A STICKY STUFF TO PBBM PRESIDENCY

 

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances

And one man in his time plays…”

-          William Shakespeare, As You Like It

When the curtain rises, we see the one man -- President Bongbong Marcos (PBBM) -- playing on the world stage, and around his neck, hangs an albatross -- Former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte (FPRRD).

That striking scene gives a picture of the drama ever evolving in the Philippine political landscape. An albatross, in the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is a metaphor for a burden that is tough to shake off.

MIF & ICC

Take for example the subtle dichotomy of Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). When PBBM launched the MIF, he announced on the world stage from the PH rooftops, “We need added investment.”

On the other hand, PBBM stood by his position against an international probe on FPRRD’s drug war, playing up his part of the political marriage in keeping the UniTeam intact and sticking up for FPRRD from such a probe. Reacting to the House of Representatives’ proposal for the government to cooperate with the ICC’s investigation, PBBM asserts, “It’s not right for outsiders to tell us who to investigate, who the police will arrest or detain.”

Strangely enough, while PBBM posted a MIF notice on the world stage showcasing “We are open for business,” in sharp contrast, he posted an ICC notice signaling “Leave us alone” – a marked contradiction in pitching his economic aspiration.

Lately, getting the drift perhaps of a frosty reception of MIF’s launching on the world stage, amid his globetrotting promotional spree, PBBM went along with Senator Padilla in toying with a stubborn idea to change the Constitution. PBBM said that his “primary interest is to try and make our country an investment-friendly place.”

Here’s food for thought: it’s not about the Constitution, it’s about the perception. Not only has PBBM been perceived as scoffing at the norms called for in the international community by ducking the extrajudicial killing (EJK) probe for babysitting FPRRD, but more than that, as Nikkei Asia’s William Pesek writes, “The fact that Marcos [Jr.] is the son of the dictator who destroyed an economy earlier, destined to be a Southeast Asian success story, only heightens fears that the [MIF] is a very bad idea.”

US SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

“Shortly after winning the presidency of the Philippines in May of [2022], Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. took his first congratulatory call from a foreign head of state. U.S. President Joe Biden was on the line,” reported Reuter on the U.S. rush to mend its “special relationship” with the Philippines which PBBM’s father, Marcos Sr., crystallized during his Martial Law regime.

“For nearly two decades American policymakers in five administrations had concluded that the [U.S.-Philippine mutual] interests were well-served by Ferdinand Marcos [Sr.],” writes Sandra Burton in her book Impossible Dream: The Marcoses, The Aquinos, and The Unfinished Revolution … “If [former president Ronald] Reagan stood for anything, it was standing up for old, anti-Communist friends. Ferdinand Marcos [Sr.] was the epitome of such a friend.”

Today, all over again, wanting the Philippines on its side, as frictions with China build up in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. has poured prominence on PBBM’s presidency designed to go back to the drawing board to touch up such a “special relationship” shredded by FPRRD.

Since then, PBBM has been basking in the sunshine of the U.S. charm offensive -- the so-called “unprecedented love-bombing” – spelled out by PBBM’s two U.S. trips in less than a year, dropping over in PH by high-ranking Biden administration officials such as U.S. VP Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

In contrast, just as though taking part in a race, FPRRD met with China’s President XI Jinping “as old friends” in Beijing. Xi reportedly asked FPRRD to keep on banging the drum for “friendly cooperation” between the two countries. “During your tenure as president of the Philippines, you had resolutely made the strategic choice to improve relations with China in an attitude of being responsible to the people and to history,” Xi told Duterte during the meeting. It stood up for what FPRRD told the Chinese business executives at the start of his presidency and proclaimed a new era of Sino-Filipino cooperation: “America has lost. I’ve realigned myself in your ideological flow.”

On top of that, though FPRRD claimed that he was not fomenting destabilization, while admitting he met with retired military and police officers, oddly enough, he issued a warning: “You who are conniving in Congress, watch the military and police closely.”

Will FPRRD keep on being a sticky stuff to PBBM’s presidency, casting it in a bad light, and dragging it down to a carbon copy of his father’s “special relationship” with the U.S. as described then by Reagan’s senior adviser Richard Armitage: “Marcos [Sr.] was as good for the U.S. as he was bad for the Philippines”?

MEDIA TANGLE

The sticky stuffiness of FPRRD to PBBM presidency, or the UniTeam taken together, is so knotty even the media has put their finger on it. Ana Marie Pamintuan in her Philstar column MAD writes:

“If Sara Duterte will be impeached over the P125 million in confidential funds that she requested for her first six months as VP, and spent in just 11 days in December last year, the approving authority (and source of the funds) will have to be included in the complaint. This happens to be another impeachable official – the President himself.”

“This can render the impeachment of the VP into a move leading to MAD – mutually assured destruction – of the warring Duterte and Marcos / Romualdez clans.”

Here’s another one with a subtle difference in expression. Tony Lopez in his Philstar column Mass Stupidity writes:

“During the Rodrigo Duterte administration, from 2016 to 2022, the Department of Education (DepEd) received a total of P3.732 trillion…

“What did our youngsters, the hope of our fatherland, get for all that money, a whopping P3.7 trillion in six years? Nothing. Except mass stupidity… [Ouch]

“Of course, you can expect to be elected because the electorate does not know any better. Why? Because the Filipino youth are the biggest voting bloc (60 percent of voters are below 24) and they happen to be the most stupid people on earth. [Ugh]

“Stupid people tend to vote the wrong people." [Yuck]

Therefore, PBBM is the wrong president?

Heads up, when you’re MAD. The UniTeam is so sticky that the logic may trigger off, as Ms. Pamintuan stamps, mutually assured destruction.

Happy Weekend Everyone!

Head photo courtesy of ABS-CBN News

Video clips courtesy of YouTube