PLEASE get me straight: I mean no malice against President Rodrigo Duterte. In fact, I voted for him on May 9, 2016, presuming he would walk his talk.
But the old journalist in me is duty-bound to call a spade a spade. There are already too many bootlickers who remind us of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes, about an emperor who spent lavishly for the finest clothes.
Two weavers offered to make for him the finest, lightest, most magnificent robe which, however, would be invisible to “undesirable” constituents. Thinking he could use such cloth to weed out undesirables, he paid the swindlers to weave the finest robe.
The emperor saw nothing of the finished work but pretended otherwise and made the notion of putting it on. He paraded in front of all his advisers who shouted praises for his “magnificent robe” until a small boy hollered, “The Emperor has no clothes!”
Do we see a parallelism in Social Weather Stations (SWS) repeatedly telling our President he enjoys 90 to 96 percent approval rating?
None of the President’s men rebuked him for taking lightly China’s military buildup in the West Philippine Sea. Remember what he said before Chinese-Filipino businessmen on Feb. 19? He said, “Kung gusto ‘nyo, gawin n’yo na lang kaming province, parang Fujian.”
When the President announced he would “give back” to the famers Boracay Island after six months of cleanup starting on April 26, nobody in his Cabinet – not even Tourism secretary Wanda Tulfo Teo – corrected him, since Boracay is no farmland but a beach resort!
Rather than sympathize with the soon-to-be bankrupt hoteliers, restaurateurs and other entrepreneurs, Labor secretary Silvestre Bello III asked them to keep paying workers’ salaries.
Would the new jobless not be tempted to sniff shabu to drown their troubles, or sell it to make both ends meet? Necessity, we all have heard, knows no law.
If we keep on applauding Duterte for his foul words and deeds, put… na, would he not be swayed, like Adolf Hitler, into concluding that “might is right”? Shouldn’t we have reacted either with a stony silence or fiery objection?
As human rights advocate-turned-spokesman Harry Roque has reversed himself – from supporter to critic of the International Criminal Court (ICC) who has now no choice but complain of “foreign intervention.”
The most popular social media outlet with 49 million active Filipino users, Facebook has deteriorated into a medium for fake news dominated by organized pro-Duterte bloggers who call “yellow” or Liberal Party supporters anybody who criticizes the President.
Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg has apologized over false stories posted to boost political propaganda at the expense of unaware victims – say Pope Francis who was falsely reported to have endorsed Donald Trump and Rody Duterte while they were still candidates for President of the United States and the Philippines, respectively.
A news story written by John Paolo Bencito for a national daily dated July 26, 2017 said that Duterte “admitted paying trolls to defend him on social media.”
This may not sound good to Duterte but Facebook has decided to partner with the critical Rappler and Vera Files for a third-party fact-checking program in the Philippines aimed at weeding out false news and mudslingings in the social media.
Long before that recent development, Zuckerberg had spoken on US TV, regretting that he had not foreseen public misuse of his global media forum. He had said, “I don’t want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy.”
We Filipinos have undermined democracy ourselves by rejoicing over “drug pushers” killed without due process, until we realize that some victims happen to be our loved ones. (hvego@gmail.com/PN)
