Duterte is a breath of empowering uncertainty that creates spaces for us to redefine ourselves

DUTERTE:  AN UNCERTAINTY THAT EMPOWERS

The public has spoken. An overwhelming majority considers the witness Edgar Matobato incredible.

You see, this is no longer about truth but about politics and perceptions.  LP perfected this art when it deployed its full powers and even recruited the Ombudsman, the BIR, and COA in humiliating Renato Corona.  That was just a dress rehearsal. They did it again to the frontrunning Binay, enabling the dark horse Duterte to blindside them. Oh, LP tried to use the same squid tactics courtesy of media networks and a resourceful but woefully effete Senator, but it was too late. In demonizing Binay, LP ended up with a worse nightmare.

This is why even if I did not vote for Digong Duterte, and I must confess I was one of those who was critical of him during the campaign, I have learned to like the man, very much. Even if I should quickly add my fundamental disagreements with him on several issues such as human rights, the drug policy and his sometimes undiplomatic ways.

But even that included, I will always pick the side of the President over these remnants of LP who appropriate the liberal discourse, just because it is the name of their party, even if they reek of Machiavellian malice (with apologies to Machiavelli) and the party is in fact a conservative force that would like to take us back to the past where Martial Law and Marcos are convenient devices not in the quest for truth and justice but to seek power.

The President is a postmodern iconoclast. He is hard to predict and therefore hard to control.  That may be a curse, but I also see it as a blessing. For once, we have a President that forces us to recalibrate, to re-examine our friendships with the US, to deconstruct the alien elements of a very individualistic human rights construct in the face of our cultural nuances as a communalistic society where rights are seen not as individual entitlements but in the context of social relationships. In a world of predictable narratives that have constantly undermined and marginalized our interest, President Duterte is a breath of empowering uncertainty that creates spaces for us to redefine ourselves, our politics, our international relations.

And thus, those who are benefitng from the predictable but disempowering narratives are the ones who are trying so hard to undermine him.

But these forces have to be warned. The dam had been broken. The babaylan is now out of the forest. And the surge that feeds the promise that ironically rests on the uncertain is now a potent force against the certainty of the Liberal Party and everything it represents.


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Antonio Contreras as posted on Facebook.