My Nephew, Recently in Mindanao

By: Boy Boyer

 

My nephew Nick returned from his most recent visit to his Filipina Fiancée Clara this January, 2018. I use pseudonyms for both of them for privacy reasons. In fact I made up new ones for this article. I contacted him after his return, as I have done for the past four years, since he first visited Clara there. He has read some of my articles critical of Duterte, and he, of course, listens to Clara’s views. She favors Duterte. Still, Nick is a keen observer and now a veteran visitor to the country. In fact, as I told him, he has become one of my primary sources.

When I emailed him a week ago, I posed a politically neutral request for his latest in-country observations. I had, however, also sent him a copy of my end-of-year article for 2017, which included a focus on four “Strong Filipino Women,” three of whom opposed Duterte. His reply inclined towards Clara’s more positive take on Duterte. Road Projects or Infrastructure occupies a prominent place in the reply.

“Road projects were getting done. I saw workers actually working on the roads which I had not seen in previous years.” He was referring to main roads in the area of Cagayan de Oro, where Clara lives. He said nothing about this to Clara, but she brought it up herself. She noted that things “are getting done now.” She credited Duterte with the change. He seems to be a Robin Hood, collecting taxes from sources that had avoided paying them, and cleaning up “corruption in government.” Nick, who has a dry sense of humor, and, of course, knowing that I might be a bit skeptical, simply stated, “All I could see was the road construction was getting done.”

One of the targets of Duterte’s attack on corruption has been Philippine Senator Leila De Lima, a vocal critic of Duterte’s war on drug and his alleged support of extra-judicial killings, now conservatively estimated in the vicinity of 4,000 people. I had written about Senator De Lima as one of the “Strong Filipino Women” and was skeptical of the charges against her. Nick noted that Clara had mentioned a woman government official (Nick could not recall the name) who had been arrested for “supporting drugs in the Philippines.” I’m guessing that this is Senator De Lima. Nick, being diplomatic, and with polite humor, said he was “not sure which story to believe since both are plausible.”

Nick heard, on several occasions, people discussing how cab drivers, and their passengers, had benefitted from Duterte’s war to eliminate the abuse of drugs. I presume the discussions occurred in the Cagayan de Oro area. Evidently cabbies there were notorious for driving while “doped.” In a Catch-22 situation, they used all their earnings to buy drugs and then had to work extra hours to support their addiction. Now the cabbies were more likely to be off drugs and working fewer hours, a double win.

Nephew Nick, approaching the end of his email, reflected, “I find myself defending Duterte often” (back in the U.S. presumably). He continued, “I neither support him nor oppose him.” In the early days of Duterte’s presidency, Nick viewed him as “a scary leader,” making allies with Russia and China, but he has since modified that view and suggests that drug dealers, of course, find ways to discredit Duterte, as do corrupt officials. He also questions how fairly or unfairly the press treats him.

In my reply to the first of Nick’s two emails, I noted that I also had praised Duterte, specifically for proposing government support for birth control for the poor. I added, however, that no matter how much good a president did, it could not excuse the extra-judicial killings. In closing, I changed subjects and asked Nick to share his observations about terrorist activities in Clara’s area. Marawa, the site of a major terrorist attack, is not far from Cagayan de Oro. His reply is the topic of my next article.

Contact Bob Boyer at Robert.boyer@snc.edu or <sundaysinmanila. com>.