WHEN he was president, Mr. Rodrigo Duterte kept the nation spellbound for his awe-inspiring leadership. He held the grip of an enthralled, almost fanatical, mob of supporters. No post-EDSA president has enjoyed as much positive trust and approval ratings as he did.
Fellow politicians and officials of government competed for superlatives to flatter him. They pandered to him and pimped for his approval.
But now, as a private citizen, he is not above questioning. The perception that he plans to recapture political power either for himself or through his surrogates, and therefore seen as getting in the way of another politician's ambition, enlarges his portrait as an object of doubt. From sandy mounds of shifting loyalty, he pops up like cannon fodder. Hecklers are hitting him at will. Not that he is in unfamiliar territory; he has been around long enough to know how to hit and how one gets hit in the game of power politics. Democracy, after all, is better served not by goodwill but by the ambition of men.
A phalanx of committees at the Speaker Martin Romualdez-led House of Representatives has launched an investigation that uncovered the sludge underneath the glow of Mr. Duterte's popularity. Romualdez is a first cousin of President Bongbong Marcos and is rumored to be the administration's bet for the presidential election in 2028 and a possible rival of Mr. Duterte's daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, for the same position.
Though panicky when he appeared before these committees, Duterte under investigation (DUI) should be a vindicating process for him if he is clean or a foretaste of hell if he is not. In the meantime, he must welcome whatever public forum is accorded to him. He enjoys a constitutional right that was denied to thousands whose lives his war on drugs had claimed. Most of these killings were reported by the police as unresolved and swept under the rug as DUIs (deaths under investigation).
That investigation, which is still ongoing and happening while another investigation has raised doubts about Sara's own integrity with respect to her use of confidential funds, dampens support for both Dutertes. For Mr. Duterte especially, the investigation has punched holes in a reputation that he built for decades, starting as mayor of Davao City. He was acclaimed for a leadership brand that was almost synonymous with political will and one that separated him from other political leaders. But that same reputation now looks like a façade, one that is mounted on a pile of lies and is about ready to crumble.
For how long will Duterte's world of make-believe keep spinning?
Between now and up to the time the people find merit in the House quad committee report exposing his lies is what should be left before a grand deception is undressed for what it is.
Citing sworn statements and testimonies presented before it, the quad committee the other day revealed what it found after conducting 13 days of fact-finding sessions on the drug war waged by the previous administration. The salient findings are damning: that the former president was the lord of all drug lords; that while he projected the image of an uncompromising champion of the herculean fight against illegal drugs, he was at the center of a criminal enterprise; and that this mafia-like enterprise diversified into fraudulent transactions that showed how his minions took advantage of the government's flawed procurement system and the corruption of state regulatory agencies.
Even before he became president, Duterte's association with Michael Young, who operated several shabu laboratories in Davao City, ticks key boxes that show the former president was himself a protector and gang leader among drug lords, according to Arturo Lascanas. The quad committee probe started and may end with Lascanas, the retired policeman who admitted being one of then Mayor Duterte's hitmen. The Lascanas affidavit — the same statement that charges Duterte for crimes against humanity in a complaint filed with the International Criminal Court in The Hague — underpins the committee's key findings that debunk Duterte being the anti-illegal drug champion that he projected himself to be, but rather the lord of all drug lords in the southern Philippines.
When he became president, Duterte appointed Michael Yang, a foreigner, as his economic adviser. Yang would soon be found entrenched in government transactions overflowing with money. From the importation of multi-billion illegal drugs through the Bureau of Customs to multi-billion procurement of medical supplies and vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic, many of them left to rot due to their substandard quality and to the rise of Pagcor-sanctioned Philippine online gaming operations (POGOs) in the country, probers could see the hand of the omnipresent Yang and his associates.
But nothing draws more suspicion to what Duterte did than the killings that happened during his dreaded war on drugs campaign. How could one kill an average of 39 suspects in one day during the first two years of his administration? What used to be hushed up when he was president, the information that shows how he rewarded the killers with money sourced from public funds, became public through the quad committee hearings. The incentive apparently worked as the killers, many of them in police uniform, went berserk. In short, Duterte used taxpayer money to kill a crime through criminal means.
Up to this point, many people believe that Duterte gets things done in ways that no other president could do. His do-something reputation remains solid up to this point. But like all things built on shifting sand, his legacy may not endure the test of time, especially under the rigor of hostile questioning. His legacy is blighted not by the questioning but by doubts that prompted the questions.
Building his image as a crime buster was costly and, in large part, paid for with the lives of thousands of mostly poor suspects. That cost can neither be counted nor paid in cash, even if one has the combined wealth of Manny Villar and Elon Musk. The lives lost cannot be replaced by any mortal power, even by a direct descendant of Abraham.
What Duterte has is a golden but fake image. The quad committee report now suggests that he used this image to conceal the truth about himself being a big dawg, the lord of drug lords, and one that must not get away from further investigation.
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