BY REGLETTO ALDRICH IMBONG
A NUMBER of Filipino philosophers/thinkers have extensively written on Rodrigo Duterte and his regime of power.
Many scholars have argued and exposed the authoritarian if not fascist nature of his rule. However, a few, at least in the discipline of Filipino philosophy, have rather provided an opposing if not a controversial reading of Duterte.
For example, one scholar dared his readers to muse on the supposed “morality” of the drug-related killings of the regime. Another passionately asserted the “radical nature” of Duterte’s politics. The former was propounded by my mentor the late Romualdo Abulad, SVD, the latter by my friend Christopher Ryan Maboloc.
Although often received with a grain of salt, the latter reading of Duterte by Maboloc has again gained new traction as it was made the subject of a plenary lecture of a philosophy conference held just last month.
As I have already articulated an academic reply to the ideas of my mentor published elsewhere, this short essay is devoted as a preliminary attempt to construct a critical response to Maboloc’s reading of Duterte’s politics. There is much to say about Maboloc’s ideas, but the space of a short commentary limits my response to what I believe are the core components of his thoughts.
Maboloc has published a number of academic works concerning his reading of Duterte’s radical politics. In these articles, Maboloc not only showed how apparently radical and anti-establishment Duterte’s brand of politics is, but also how Duterte’s critics have supposedly misread his policies.
Maboloc’s writings are a defense of Duterte and a critique against critics at the same time. There can be no better way in defending than by attacking as well.
At the core of Maboloc’s defense of Duterte’s politics are the assertions that, on the one hand, his brand of politics re-situates the Mindanao agenda, and, on the other, his methodology is radically anti-establishment.
First, Maboloc believed that Duterte’s politics is “a radical revolution that is rooted in the language of dissent of the Bisaya.” This reading is based on what Maboloc called as the politics of exclusion, where people from the Philippine south are supposedly marginalized or excluded from the development agenda of “imperial Manila.”
This politics of exclusion, rooted in a long colonial history, has supposedly provided the structures of oppression and discrimination against the people of the Philippine south, especially the people of Mindanao. As Maboloc explained, the colonizers “instituted an elitist democratic system that endangered a deep social divide that has made the people of Mindanao feel betrayed by the capital.”
Second, Maboloc also expressed that Duterte’s political methodology is one that challenges the established order, particularly the oligarchic order. He claimed that “on another front, Duterte is also waging war against the country’s oligarchs.”
Citing instances when Duterte “challenged prominent individuals” and “forced big time tax evaders” to settle their tax obligations to the country,Maboloc maintained that Duterte delivers his promises in dismantling oligarchy.
I believe that these two important components of Maboloc’s construction of (Duterte’s) radical politics are respectively based on identity and crony politics. Identity politics pushes political agenda that are based on the particular and oftentimes dividing identities of a group of people (for example, their race, social background, class, or other identifying factors).
An example of how Maboloc (tacitly) employed such a politics is when he charged that “it has always been the Tagalogs who make the major decisions, thereby subjugating the ‘kabubut-on’ or ‘will’ of the Bisaya.” Here, Maboloc not only distinguished between two different identities – since identity politics is the politics of difference – but also opposed one from the other. One can see here the tendency of how identity politics divides rather than unites subjectivities.
While Maboloc was partially correct in identifying how the “have-nots” have been forced out into the margins, he ultimately ended up with a wrong conclusion by identifying the “have-nots” solely with the Bisaya. (To be continued) (Bulatlat.com)
