Trite though this adage may sound, “strike while the iron is hot” seems to be the guidepost of the new Duterte administration.
It’s about “hitting the ground running” in the war on drugs. And don’t say the new leader did not warn the public. He kept saying “it will be bloody” even during the campaign. Some of us winced when he described in campaign platforms and other fora, how he would fight the drug menace, thinking about the reaction of the religious groups, the human rights activists, and media. They did react, they did warn, but at the end of the day, Rodrigo Duterte proved that he read the public mind, and sensed the public mood, better than all of us who thought we knew what political strategy and communication sound bytes meant.
He spoke publicly about ending “endo.” The other candidates for president followed with their own chorus of similar promises. But only Duterte seemed resolute, or so the voters thought. And now these voters are hearing the promise repeated, with their new president warning employers who will be found abusing the law on contractual work: “Stop contractualization. Don’t wait for me to catch you because I will be unforgiving…I’ll just simply close your plant.”
Defining what is acceptable under the law and what is not the new president will leave to his appointees in the labor department and his economic managers. But the word is clear, and the will resolute: weigh in favor of the marginalized workers.
Another campaign promise is on the way towards implementation. And that is a revision of the present fundamental law of the land. Duterte favors a shift to a federal system. He began talking about the need to go federal as early as 2014, and anchored his introduction to the national public by going around bandying, in kilometric speeches, the need for a shift from the highly centralized unitary system first imposed by the colonizer Spain and followed through by the next colonizer, America, and thence institutionalized by the ruling politico-economic elite across our several republics.
And on this, he is showing resolute will once more. He discussed it in his State of the Nation Address. Prior to that, he spoke to our Muslim brothers to temper their impatience about the failed BBL, because he had federalism as a card to redress the historical injustice that rankled in their hearts. Before Congress last week, he argued for the retention of a president elected at large by the people, reading well the sentiment that every Filipino wants a day when his vote is supreme in the choice of a leader.
A few days later, impatient for change to begin, he argued for a constituent assembly made up of the present members of Congress instead of electing delegates to a Constitutional Convention which would be “too costly.”
The debates have now centered on whether spending much for a separate body of delegates is worth every centavo, as against entrusting the revisions of the fundamental law to a cabal of dynasts and the political elite.
Whatever and however both houses of Congress and the Executive eventually hammer out, the message is clear: changing the Constitution is not a question of fact, only of how. And the question of when is answered simply: now.
And all of these have happened within the first 30 days. How is that for amazing pace?
There is a trite descriptive for all these, and it is “political will.”
Some critics will say the new leader is plain bull-headed, even unreasonable. But after years and years of leaders who waffle, who prevaricate, who paralyze action through unending analysis, Rodrigo Roa Duterte is a welcome change to the “super majority” of this nation.
This is not to say he cannot step a bit backward, as in the Maoist line of “one-step backward, two steps forward.”
Speaker Pantaleon “Bebot” Alvarez publicly called for a “preparatory commission” of wise men who could be formed to move around the country and seek public consensus towards the parameters of fundamental change. The names he mentioned are both learned and respected. Surely this would be welcome enough to those who fear that the representatives they “elected” themselves just three months ago cannot be properly entrusted to navigate towards real change.
Add to that the need for a massive information campaign that must be immediately launched to inform the public about the needed changes in the constitution of the land and the merits of a federal system.
It won’t be an easy debate. Even Duterte has no illusions about ramming through a new system. But he and his leaders in Congress have started the ball rolling.
Change has come.
