Duterte’s terrorism is funded by US imperialism
[This article was originally published by SINAG on August 30, 2020.]
The year was 2016.
Two presidential candidates over 8,000 miles apart ran as outsiders and won — one faking humble origins, and the other building a platform around being “really rich.” Yet with their populist promises, misogynistic remarks, hostile distrust of the media, and a blatant disregard for the rule of law, it is hard to shake off the eerie similarities between Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump.
Four years later, the parallelism becomes nearly impossible to miss.
With the global pandemic still going on, the country’s leaders seem to demonstrate the same type of leadership — or lack thereof.
From the onset, both have initially downplayed the threat of the then impending crisis. Despite both claiming that they warned their citizens from the very start, the two have notably belittled the public’s growing concern.
“It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear,” Trump stated in an African American History Month reception in the White House Cabinet Room back in February 27.
On the same note, Duterte has claimed that the virus would eventually “die a natural death.”
“Let’s start with the narratives by saying that everything is well in the country. There is nothing really to be extra scared of that coronavirus thing although it has affected a lot of countries,” he said in a press briefing back on February 3.
He even doubled down seven days later. In a meeting with local chief executives to discuss the action plan for the developing pandemic, Duterte had the gall to joke about the virus.
“If you want to cough, do it now. If you want to sneeze, sneeze it. Walang problema dito. Ako, I don’t believe in that…Tutal hindi ako bilib, itong mga SAR[S], SAR[S],” he said.
(If you want to cough, do it now. If you want to sneeze, sneeze it. There’s no problem here. Me, I don’t believe in that… I don’t believe such SARs, SARs.)
Furthermore, the same event revealed another glaring similarity: the utter absence of a roadmap for recovery. The meeting turned out to be for naught, as the local officials were left to deal with the crisis in the following days without a clear strategy and direction from the national government.
In the same vein, the Trump administration’s failure to immediately provide a much-needed national strategy has compelled states to come up with their own responses.
The two controversial presidents appear to be taking pages from the same book. Tragically, the Trump-Duterte pandemic playbook does not seem to take into account the people they swore to serve.
The most alarming item in their book, however, seems to be the notorious tactic of driving the public’s attention away from the government’s incompetence by creating a pretend enemy.
In the US, Trump and his cohorts have written off the large uprisings that followed George Floyd’s murder to be organized by “outside agitators,” in an attempt to delegitimize the protests and deny the underlying systemic racism.
Duterte, having mastered such deflection, callously used the pandemic as a pretext to intensify the crackdown on dissent.
Press freedom took a blow as the Duterte administration shut down ABS-CBN, the country’s largest broadcast network, rendering more than 11,000 workers jobless amid a pandemic. Even netizens were targeted. Social media posts critical of the government were discouraged, and even punished such as in the cases of filmmaker Maria Victoria Beltran, teacher Julieta Espinosa, and student-journalist Joshua Molo.
By illogically placing security forces at the forefront of tackling the crisis, human rights violations were rampant especially during the first weeks of the lockdown. Between March 17 and July 25, the Philippine National Police had recorded more than 260,000 “curfew and disobedience violators” that included around 76,000 arrests.
With the Anti-Terror Law in place, the nationwide repression gravely escalates, and the end is nowhere in sight.
What is deeply concerning is how Trump and Duterte did not pick up the same schemes from attending the international convention for incompetent governance. The reality is far more appalling: the Duterte administration is determined to destroy every bit of resistance, and the US is an active accomplice and enabler in the bloodbath that ensues.
Under the aegis of US foreign policy, the Trump administration is eager to provide the Duterte regime with all the military aid it desires. As a result, the Duterte administration need not pay attention to the people’s concerns as long as it has the backing of said imperialist power.
Despite repeatedly voicing his mistrust of the US, the Duterte administration’s actions and policies reveal otherwise. While his affection for China is loud and obnoxious, the US-Duterte alliance has always been silently brewing.
Through the US military aid and joint military activities, the Duterte administration carried out corporate extractions of Philippine natural resources and terrorized indigenous and peasant communities.
Such dreadful partnership also explains the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) back-and-forth. Despite announcing the VFA termination back in February to avenge Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa’s wounded feelings after his entry visa to the US was denied, Duterte eventually backpedaled on the decision. It is no coincidence that this change of heart followed US arms sales to the Philippines, amounting to nearly two billion dollars.
Clearly, the US directly benefits from Duterte’s fascist regime, crushing both the local opposition and advancing foreign interests. A misallocation of US resources and an aggravation of human rights abuses in the Philippines, the deadly partnership benefits neither citizens of the two countries.
But the parallels do not end with the leaders’ authoritarian tendencies, exploitive policies, and inept governance — it is also seen in the people’s resistance. With the pandemic exposing the rot in the world system unbridled by territorial borders, people are rising up against the countless injustices of tyrannical regimes.
Now more than ever, we are called to intensify the fight against imperialist plunder that perpetuates oppression and violence in the name of profit. Let us join the masses in restoring the leadership that rightfully belongs to the people.
After all, we have a world to win.
