President Duterte’s crucial challenges in 2019
Credit to Author: RICARDO SALUDO| Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2019 18:29:03 +0000
Will President Rodrigo Duterte follow Benigno Aquino 3rd’s path?
Not the latter’s policies and initiatives, which Duterte has rightly reversed, clamping down on crime, which tripled under Aquino; repairing ties with China, which soured under him; and firing graft-tainted appointees, instead of defending them from corruption charges, and even paying their bail in Sandiganbayan cases.
Rather, the path Duterte could trace is Aquino’s net satisfaction ratings in Social Weather Stations surveys. Like Aquino, as well as Fidel Ramos, President Duterte has seen his SWS net grade average above plus-50 in his first two and a half years. That means Filipinos satisfied with him are more than double the number of dissatisfied.
But in the third year of their presidencies, Aquino and Ramos saw ratings drop due to major controversies and problems. Rice shortage and the controversy over overseas worker Flor Contemplacion, executed for murder in Singapore, brought Ramos’ net rating to just plus-1 in October 1995, from plus-50 at the end of 1994.
And Aquino’s mark deteriorated below plus-50 starting mid-2013, hit by the pork barrel and Disbursement Acceleration Program controversies, the Zamboanga siege by the Muslim rebels, the Bohol earthquake, Supertyphoon Yolanda, all in the second half of 2013; and the Mamasapano massacre of 44 police commandos in January 2015.
Result: both leaders lost their shine and could not get the nation behind their charter change initiatives and chosen successors. Ramos’ Cha-cha effort failed, and his Lakas party’s presidential candidate lost badly. Aquino’s Liberal Party also won little support when it floated the idea of lifting presidential term limits, and his anointed successor Mar Roxas never got much traction in the 2016 campaign and elections.
Up or down for Duterte?
Whether or not Duterte is likely to follow the same midterm decline, which also happened to Corazon Aquino in her fourth year in office, the national stakes are far higher now.
Duterte’s Cha-cha isn’t lifting term limits on himself, but recasting the entire three-decade-old Constitution, and turning our centrally government unitary state into a federal republic never before tried in our history.
Also in the balance are four more tranches of tax reforms, already delayed due to inflation problems wrongly blamed on the first reform law, which the government failed to support with a proper communications campaign.
With nationwide advertising costing just a fraction of the tens of billions of pesos in additional revenues raised by the tax law, large sectors of the public could have been shown that the reforms not only benefited the people, but also did not cause rising oil and food prices. But no such campaign has been mounted.
Now, if current tax bills falter, so would infrastructure funding and private investment needed to sustain growth and development create millions of jobs, and address endemic poverty feeding crime and insurgency. Big business sees tax legislation as key not only to financing public works, but also stabilizing prices, interest rates, and the peso — all crucial to investor confidence.
Add to Duterte’s big 2019 challenges the effort to end decades-old Muslim and communist insurgencies. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s path toward peace hangs on the Organic Law of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (Olbarmm), due to be voted on in a Mindanao referendum on January 21.
If the Olbarmm doesn’t pass, or if its implementation runs into major problems, then the MILF may lose ground to extremist groups, including those backed by the Middle East’s brutal Islamic State terrorist cabal.
If Mindanao attacks escalate due to Olbarmm failings, then the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police would not be able to concentrate AFP and PNP troops in pacifying the communist insurgency.
President Duterte has rightly scrapped peace talks with the insincere or ineffectual leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines, its armed wing New People’s Army, and their National Democratic Front legal organization. Instead, Duterte has created a task force to forge peace accords with local NPA units.
AFP and PNP forces must make significant gains against the CPP-NPA, as well as crime syndicates continuing to bring narcotics into the country. Otherwise, both rebels and criminals would seem set to outlast Duterte, and thus, continue or resume co-opting local politicians.
If that happens, federalism could usher in even worse lawlessness and rebellion, as regional governments with greater powers and resources collude with drug and jueteng lords, insurgents and even terrorists.
Wanted: Strategic leadership
What should President Duterte and his administration do in the face of these monumental strategic challenges?
In two words: strategic leadership.
To be exact, President Duterte should employ his formidable political clout and public support to directly and prominently mobilize political groups, major sectors, and the nation at large behind his key agenda: Charter change, tax reform, infrastructure development and national unity and peace.
For starters, candidates seeking presidential and administration endorsement and funding must openly espouse Duterte’s paramount thrusts. So must government and allied communications, ideally with big-bucks nationwide advertising for Cha-cha, tax reform, public works, and peace efforts, which opponents cannot match.
Duterte must also appoint capable and focused Cabinet secretaries to drive his agenda. Finance Secretary Sonny Dominguez has capably managed the tax reform effort, though he could have done better with the above-mentioned ad campaign.
But unless we missed the appointments, there seem to be no chiefs for Charter change, infrastructure and the peace process. Local Government Secretary Eduardo Año lacks clout and links to the political establishment. His attention and energies are also taken up by the counterinsurgency and peace campaign.
As for infrastructure, while spending has leapt, the Palace project monitoring arm must tighten its prodding, after the change in leadership to Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles, from his predecessor Leoncio Evasco Jr., now running for Bohol governor.
Besides advancing on these agenda fronts, the administration must win big in the May elections. If the opposition makes significant gains, it could block legislation, including tax reforms, infrastructure funds and the new charter. And it would build alliances for the 2022 polls.
Lastly, Duterte and the Cabinet must take action not only to quickly address major controversies and crises, but also preempt them by preventive measures. Otherwise, the casualty would be nothing less than Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s platform of change.
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