Karl Not Marx

Karl, not Marx: Essays on Rebellion,
Liberty, and Struggle

Copyright 2020 by Vox Populi PH
and by Karl Patrick Wilfred M. Suyat
First Edition, January 2021
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KARL, NOT MARX: ESSAYS ON REBELLION,
LIBERTY, AND STRUGGLE
“Rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love.”
—ALBERT CAMUS
CON TE N TS
Alcohol, activism, Arendt: and everything in between | 1
The irony of National Students’ Day | 10
Independence in a Time of Terror | 13
The Paradox of Democracy | 16
Democracy is Not a Piece of Paper | 21
Rendezvous with Marcos | 27
Duterte as Disaster Symbol | 31
ALCOHOL, ACTIVISM, ARENDT : AND
EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN
“I rebel; therefore, I exist.”
—ALBERT CAMUS
STARTING FROM THE TIME OF MY FATHER’S DEMISE, my whole life

can be summed up in one word: rebellion. And I could not be any
prouder of this titular privilege. It’s a badge of honor that I wear,
even in a time when the mere mention of “rebel” wakes up the
wicked consciousness of Antonio Parlade, Jr.
But we will get there.
Actually, my adolescent through adulthood years were so
turbulent, exhilarating, exciting, mesmerizing, and intoxicating that
I could tell you more amazing tales than when I was a young lad.
More exciting were the discoveries, realizations, and newfound
knowledge that I picked up along the way.
Let’s start in my last year in elementary.
Since my father’s political influence on my young
consciousness never wavered despite my mind’s youthfulness at
that time, my classmates and batchmates from elementary already
knew me as a political animal. While developing young relationships
or playing basketball with our peers, I busied myself watching Batas
Militar or any other documentary covering the Marcos years. Sounds
uncanny for a young kid turning into an adolescent, right? (Of course,
I watched other stuff that I would rather not discuss openly, for fear
of maternal reprisal.)
Fast forward to Grade 5.
2 • KARL PATRICK WILFRED M. SUYAT
My young immersion into the political sea made me a
viable candidate for our student council elections. Of course,
because we were young students, it’s nowhere near the University
of the Philippines’ student council elections. But it was a festive
expression of my young self’s unwavering commitment to political
exercise, nevertheless.
Anyway, my opponent was the status quo candidate; her
family’s business was our small school’s supplier of trophies, gold
medals, and other tributaries. The person herself was, at that time,
the administration’s pet—a larger version of the teacher’s pet.
She was the favorite among both teachers and officials in higher
positions.
Meanwhile, I was a lousy rebel.
Despite the obviously lopsided battle, I still went on with
my fledgling candidacy. My opponent picked the closest ones to the
powers-that-be, while I chose equally agile and idealistic friends.
We ran on a rag-tag campaign, where I tried my best (but failed) to
channel the spirit of Ninoy or Lean Alejandro into our campaign. My
speech, which turned out to be an abomination when I read it again
five years after, was a rousing one to my young audience.
BUT LITTLE DID I EXPECT that I’ll stand a chance to win.

Heck, I was even crying to my mother over the telephone at
that time because my opponent had a tarpaulin fluttering from their
classroom’s grilled windows—while our campaign, rag-tag as it was,
ran on cartolinas taped on each other.
When the elections’ results came out, we pulled off a huge
surprise: more than half of our slate won.
That was one of the first lessons that I learned from my
pre-pubescent through adolescent years: grim determination and
resolution to achieve anything can do wonders.
Once my new team of student council officers assumed
office, it did not take too long before I got to taste my first scuffle
with a school administration over principle. Of course, in my younger
years, I already had my run-ins with school officials because, well,
I was an intransigent kid—and until now. There was even one
incident from my fourth grade, where our prefect of discipline at
ALCOHOL, ACTIVISM, ARENDT : AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN • 3
that time asked me to squat while carrying four encyclopedias on
my arms as punishment for a school violation or misdeed that I
can barely remember now. As a kid suffused with crazy amounts of
intransigence, I did not whimper.
But this specific scuffle had a different ingredient in it, which
made it unique. It was a matter of principle.
To cut a long story short, the other section in our grade
level tried to undercut our lead in a (from my current view, petty)
competition called Popularity Contest. The mechanics were simple:
whichever section can accumulate the highest amount in each
section’s collection box wins that trophy.
Of course, our young band of classmates was too eager to
win over that trophy (whose current whereabouts I don’t know or
remember) that we sacrificed every single penny we could offer for
our section’s collection box. Because of our collective efforts (whose
significance I would fully realize when I was already an activist), we
almost won that contest.
Except for one thing—the aunt of a student from our rival
contest happened to be also the school’s treasurer.
AFTER THE COMPETITION’S CUT-OFF, that official furtively sneaked in

P1,500 to let the other section, our rival, win the competition. And
the worst part? She did it to the face of the council’s president (who
happened to be me), our adviser, and our treasurer. As the illicit act
happened, I could not muster a single word of protest; but when I
headed down to meet my mother and our friend in the canteen, I
had a sudden outburst.
Deep inside myself, I knew that was a wrong act. And letting
it pass would’ve scarred my conscience forever.
I voiced out my protest right away. The school officials
immediately convened the council and the official-in-question to
clear the air. Surprisingly, she denied committing any wrongdoing.
I stood my ground. We may not have been able to seize back the
award that rightfully belonged to us, but we scored a moral victory.
In the months leading to our graduation, my confrontation
with the school administration intensified. I had many concerns
that became complaints around that time—from some teachers’
unethical habit to smoke in some obscure spot in the school to
my personal animosity with our guidance counselor. It reached a
point when, after an injurious battle I had with that authoritarian
‘guidance’ official over a misconception (she thought I was the one
dribbling off a ball that disturbs her class on the room adjacent to
ours—and pointedly screamed at myself, who was shaking in rage by
then), I said I’ve had enough. I filed an official complaint to challenge
these two power-tripping officials.
As soon as I left school, so did the two of them. The school
kicked them out.
That’s one of the feathers in my cap of rebellion: I had a
record of kicking out two teachers whom I perceived at that time as
too strict, dictatorial, and abusive. What else within the framework
of school administration, therefore, could scare me off?
MY INDUCTION INTO JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL wasn’t smooth-sailing

either. But it was one hell of a ride.
I had my first taste of campus journalism right during my
first year in high school. Funny story: I actually missed the school
paper application that year and decided that I would join in my
second year; my rationale was to form networks of acquaintances
first before I hop into school activities and revelry. But sheer
luck had it for me then: our English teacher, who happened to
nurse a harmonious balance of a frightening aura and a vivacious
personality, was also the paper’s adviser—and, like my father, she
was also a former activist.
Paradoxically, what caught her attention was a simple
Facebook post I wrote on Ninoy’s death anniversary. It was actually
riddled with spelling errors and grammatical dysfunctions. Still, it
might have spellbound her into inviting me—way out of the same
deadline she imposed for auditions—to formally join the paper.
All it took was a formal invitation during one belated class
session. With enough eagerness, I mounted to the challenge.
From there, I learned a second lesson in life: even youthful
aspirations, such as to see one’s byline published on an actual
student publication, was never that easy to achieve. But the travails
and rough crisscrosses I had faced through my first year as a campus
journalist behooved me to take a direction I never thought I would
even have the interest of traipsing through writing and journalism.
Where I failed (and miserably at that) in scriptwriting for radio
broadcasting, I soared like an eagle in editorial-writing. On my
first year in the publication, I quickly earned a second-place award
for the collaborative desktop publishing competition’s editorial-
writing cluster for that year’s state-backed Division Schools Press
Conference (DSPC). For someone who had no formal training in
writing and learned the ropes only by leafing through the Philippine
Daily Inquirer pages since I was midway through elementary, it was
a feat.
MY STREAK DID NOT STOP SINCE THEN. Consecutively, I bagged awards

for each year that I spent in Junior High School as a member of
the publication: first place to second place, alternately, in relatively
similar competitions. Apart from those prosaic competitions, I
also wrote for the paper’s various sections—an informal training
in itself—and sharpened my pen further by reading every book in
every nook and cranny of my paper adviser’s teaching room. (A slight
confession: the 14 books that I loaned from her personal library still
remains in my possession.)
But that experience, for all the glory on which I basked
alongside my pen, was not about competitions alone. In each time
our team spent quality time together, before and after competitions,
connections were made—and, in turn, lesions were stitched with each
other. I learned a few more things that eventually became useful in
my later years: competing without sleep is a no-no; coffee is the best
insulator for non-stop working (as I have done now); the sharpest
editorials are written not with the strongest vocabularies but with
the clearest and sturdiest points of the argument; punctuality is an
integral key to success; reading takes precedence over any other
writing exercise; grit is useless without back-breaking efforts; having
a nose for the news is important for any aspiring journalist; and
coffee is best served, especially for writers, when it’s black.
BUT ONE LESSON, UNTIL NOW, STANDS OUT: journalism is never

“unbiased” or neutral.
Something my other teacher in my last year in Junior High
School, also a powerful director in my new school (much like my
paper adviser), does not acknowledge.
From this instance, a new lesson dawned on me: when faced
with authoritarian juggernauts, the best response—when you’re
obstinate—is to stand your ground.
In one of our most memorable exchanges inside the
classroom, in my fourth (and most delicate) year in Junior High, we
had a huge and heated argument after I refused to bow down to
her assertion that Filipino journalists are “biased” and “bayaran”
(corrupt). As editor-in-chief of the activist paper whose adviser had
maintained progressive stances and principles, I simply couldn’t
betray my journalistic lineage, which prides itself in its independence
and fierce brand of reportage.
I stood my ground. The director’s response? Talking behind
my back.
To cut to the chase, I did not budge to her antics. After
infuriating myself (and the whole class) for dragging my innocent
class adviser into our tussle, I hurriedly called up my mother and
faced that bully of a director right in her lair. With my mother,
adviser, and a classmate to testify if she tries to twist the story, we
went up to her office and face her off—instead of futilely waiting for
the date, she would decide to formally invite me for administrative
reprimanding. She remained adamant in her hostile stance while
calling me “arrogant” for the “sin” of standing my ground against
her prejudiced stance.
I snapped when that happened, thinking that if these
allegations are true—why couldn’t she say it to my face, considering
that the power imbalance between us tilts the favor more to her
side than to mine?
At that precise moment, I called her a fascist right to her
face.
I will never forget the aura of that moment, the few seconds
of silence that followed after I dropped that bombshell. If she did
not tell my face her raw thoughts about her fiercest enemy in the
studentry (at least, in our activist batch), I would tell mine—if only
to set an example, both to her and to my cabal.
This act of defiance gave us a victory, no matter how puny: she
pulled out of our class. Instead of getting unnerved, frightened, or
saddened, the whole class rejoiced when she dropped our section.
STAND YOUR GROUND. Three words that defined my journey into

adolescence. When faced with threats, fear, or manufactured fright,
there is no other choice but to face the enemy.
This same principle, unbeknownst to myself when I first got
wind of it, was at the core of my budding activism’s fundamental
stages. When Rodrigo Duterte won in 2016—my second year in that
level—I had already become a nosy, vocal, and unyielding political
animal. ‘Social justice warrior’ was the appendage I gave to myself,
without any relation to the movement with the same name. Because
of my father’s tales about the Marcos dictatorship’s atrocities,
which I had now compounded with similar stories and factual
information from activist and journalist friends, Duterte’s threats to
kill any and all he considers the society’s dregs never sat well with
my consciousness.
SINCE DAY ONE OF HIS PRESIDENCY, on July 1, 2016, I was a Duterte

critic. Until this very minute.
By then, little did I realize that my anti-Duterte crusade—
which started out in my simple disagreement with his vow of
‘cleansing’ crime by employing Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution of mass
murder—would become my prelude to an eventual life as an activist.
In my writings, on my Facebook wall, and in every chance I got in the
class and off-class discussions, I seized every moment I could get to
trumpet my principles and argumentations about the sitting tyrant,
notwithstanding the audience: my friends, classmates, schoolmates,
teachers, and peers. Either they take whatever it is that I say with a
critical lens—or they leave me right away. Only a few did leave. This
became the roots of what would eventually emerge as my activism.
Within this period, I realized another thing: that life is a hodge-
podge of tough calls.
Since my mother, a civil servant and government worker,
initially disapproved of my increasing vociferousness about the
Duterte regime and my nascent willingness to take action against
his emerging fascist dictatorship, I had many run-ons with her about
this activism; most of them turned out to be emotional.
But after years of failed persuasion on my end to tame
my principles and seek out a life outside the perils of activism
and having a critical stance on Malacañang’s tyrannical occupant,
she relented. Had I refused to make a tough call of persisting in
standing my ground even in the face of threats of being kicked out
of our house to spare her from the troubles of activism, I would not
have even reached this point of personal liberty within our humble
abode.
I can imagine my father from whichever universe he now
walks in, “I was right.”
He was.
IN DUTERTE’S SECOND YEAR IN OFFICE, in 2018, I formally joined an

organization. On that same year, amidst the 46th anniversary of
Ferdinand Marcos’ imposition of his murderous regime, I spoke in
the first major protest action I have joined (although I have joined
one protest march that traversed in our town early in July of 2018,
in time with the tyrant’s State of the Nation Address). I’m now three
years into membership in the same mass movement that Duterte’s
regime now tries with a bloody amount of severity to crush—by hook
or by crook.
I have just turned eighteen around this time, but my first
taste of alcohol was way past my legal age. I first had a taste of
liquor when I was 14 years old, and boy, I never regretted drinking
myself into intoxication under my parents’ nose.
Because that offered me another lesson that I still cling to in
my eighteenth year of existence: accustoming one’s self to alcohol
makes a person more immune to the downsides of inebriation,
instead of taking sporadic potshots whenever a chance to sneak lay
abound. You don’t expect fate to take that chance; you seize it.
Bottles after bottles of alcohol that I have gulped and
shared with friends and peers made me realize that, sometimes, the
rawest and most honest of emotions and opinions emanate from
someone’s intoxication. Lucky for myself, though, I become more
silent as more alcohol flows through my veins and throat—unlike
most people, who suddenly become loudmouths when alcohol
touches their veins.
Whenever I nurse a heartbreak, harbor an affection or
romantic attraction, face confusion over decisive turning points of
life, or whatever requires deep contemplation, alcohol has become
a part of my moments of meditation. More often than not, my wise
self unleashes itself when alcohol is around (but not when I already
have a hung over).
The epoch we are bound to face—life with the uncertainty
and treachery of the future—is as fragile as an intoxicated guy after
12 bottles’ worth of vodka or beer. For what it’s worth, the biggest
discovery I have now is not so much about Duterte, or San Miguel,
or student papers; it’s about how, in the pursuit of tyrants to
consolidate their hold on power, the precarious line separating the
political/public from the personal, the boundaries that keep lies at
bay and far away from distorting the truth, becomes thinner by the
day—until it is blurred and broken by tyrannical circumstance.
In the words of one of my favorite thinkers and political
philosophers, Hannah Arendt: …the ideal subject of a totalitarian
state is not the convinced Nazi or Communist, but people for whom
the distinction between fact and fiction (that is, the reality of
experience) and the distinction between true and false (that is, the
standards of thought) no longer exist.
FOR SOMEONE WHO HAS TRIED to immerse himself in the words and
thoughts of the world’s greatest thinkers, this totalitarian idea is
now becoming a reality—amidst state-sponsored witch-hunts. It
attempts to wage war on critical, dissenting voices.
It’s a thought darker than it seems to be. Hell, I need
alcohol—and activism—to tide this totalitarian nightmare over, with
everyone who believes in the right of man to be free.
That’s another lesson, by the way: we have the right to be
free, without any prejudicial consent from those in power.
THE IRONY OF NATIONAL
STUDENTS’ DAY
“Fascism is capitalism in decay.”
—VLADIMIR ILYICH LENIN
RODRIGO DUTERTE’S REGIME DOESN’T ESCAPE IRONY.

In August, in the second week of the Senate’s witch-hunt
into the alleged communist recruitment in universities, Malacañang
released a freshly-signed copy of Republic Act No. 11369, the National
Students’ Day Act. RA 11369 declared November 17—observed
globally as International Students’ Day—as a national holiday in
“recognition of the invaluable contribution of student activism to
Philippine democracy.”
The new law has been highly appreciated were it not for
the present political situation, where the very President who had
endorsed it had also issued Executive Order 70, greenlighting a
“Whole-of-Nation” approach targeting legal activists, dissenters,
and leftist organizations critical of the regime’s anti-people
policies and pronouncements. The Senate—presently dominated by
Duterte’s men – has since been engaged in a show of red-tagging
student leaders and activists, their teachers, and their academic
environments.
While It is important to recognize the turbulent history
of student activism in the country, it is much more essential to
acknowledge that the travails activists had faced in the country’s
past—from colonial regimes to Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship, to
post-EDSA governments including Duterte’s—are not exactly things
of the past.
THE IRONY OF NATIONAL STUDENT’S DAY • 11
THREATS AND INTIMIDATION AGAINST PROGRESSIVES continue to

exist. The state’s guns are still trained on social activists.
During Martial Law, for example, Liliosa Hilao—the activist
and campus journalist who became the first Filipino killed by the
Marcos regime—is a name too often mentioned as an example of
young Filipinos’ courageous dissent against the dictator. But in our
time, we have Alexandra Pacalda—the activist and campus journalist
who belonged to the College Editors’ Guild of the Philippines—whom
the Duterte regime jailed, and who continues to be in detention
after the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ baseless charges that she
was engaged in armed rebellion.
Myles Albasin is another proof. For the “crime” of affiliating
with the national democratic organization Anakbayan in Cebu, the
military red-tagged her and continued to keep her in detention.
Other student activists have been the subject of unrelenting
surveillance, red-tagging, and harassment by the Duterte regime’s
forces in other parts of the country.
Duterte’s edict made this possible. E0 70 gave birth to Oplan
Kapanatagan, the menacing counter-insurgency blueprint patterned
after the United States’ formula.
ON NOVEMBER 22, 2018, Duterte signed Memorandum Order No 32,

further boosting his arsenal of legal ammunition against activists.
It seeks to “suppress” lawless violence in Samar, Bicol, and Negros.
What had sprouted in its midst, however, was the more sinister
Oplan Sauron. True to its name, Sauron buttressed a series of
murders, arrests, and raids targetting progressive organizations in
Negros, including the one conducted on Halloween. In Bicol, MO, 32
led to youth activist Ryan Hubilla, a Grade 12 student.
Duterte’s designation of November 17 as a special holiday
to appreciate student activism should be met with heightened
resistance, as the irony of this act points to a stark truth: criminalizing
dissent is the crime. Duterte is today’s student activists’ Berdugo
(butcher), much like Marcos, Gloria Arroyo, Jovito Palparan.
In their observance of the November 17 declaration, student
activists could benefit much more not from listening to Eduardo
Año’s timeworn litanies of “communist recruitment” in youth camps.
Still, from revisiting history: Rizal, the ilustrado band, and Bonifacio’s
Katipunan paved the way for the first anti-colonial movement that
overthrew the Spaniards. Activists also kept nationalist fervor
burning throughout the American and Japanese occupations.
During the Marcos era, Kabataang Makabayan spearheaded the First
Quarter Storm protests that shook the regime to its core and kept
the resistance alive through 14 dark years, until the EDSA uprising
kicked Marcos out of Malacañang in 1986.
And up to now, young activists continue to stand in Lean
Alejandro’s “line of fire, place of honor.”
[Originally published on Rappler, November 19, 2019 10:28 AM PHT.]

INDEPENDENCE IN A TIME OF TERROR
“Independence does not die. Not even when all
freedom-fighters are murdered.”
SHOULD WE STILL LOOK FORWARD to Independence Day at this time?

Tens of thousands of our countrymen are now struggling
to make ends meet, as the government chose to enter the general
community quarantine with little to no plan at all. Thousands of
workers teeter on the edge of unemployment because the two-
month-long enhanced community quarantine before nearly
paralyzed the economy. Our overseas workers, whom the president
loves to call “heroes,” now suffer and even die just to fulfill their
wish of coming home to their families. Students and teachers stand
on the edge of despair because the transition to online classes
does not include the marginalized sectors. Mass testing remains a
clarion call even as the regime owes billions of dollars in loans from
foreign powers. Bikers, consumers of Netflix and other applications,
and even online sellers are called to pay taxes—while China-backed
Philippine offshore gaming operations enjoy billions thanks to tax
evasion. Jeepney drivers and even students are being arrested for
the mere “crime” of protest.
And now, amid all the crises exacerbated by the COVID-19
pandemic, an anti-terror bill wraps around the neck of the nation,
ready for the minute Rodrigo Duterte affixes his signature to it.
To Senator Panfilo Lacson, the bill is a “landmark legislation”
striving to penalize acts of terrorism. To the National Task Force to
End the Local Communist Armed Conflict, it is an effective way of
stamping out their bogeymen. To the police and military, it comes
at a perfect time—to shove aside the mockery of Debold Sinas’
mañanita, as well as to show off their graphic art skills.
But to the ordinary people, who have always been on the
losing end in the battle against the powers-that-be, it is none other
than an act of legitimizing state-sanctioned terrorism.
DUTERTE’S TERROR BILL DOES NOT provide comfort for the common
tao. On the contrary, the bill merely evokes the memory of Kian
Delos Santos being dragged by two plainclothes policemen to a
dumpster before killing him or Lumad children and teachers being
hounded by terrorists in camouflage because National Security
Adviser Hermogenes Esperon declared their schools as “communist
fronts.” It reminds us of what Carl Angelo Arnaiz, Aldrin Castillo, Myca
Alpina, Raymart Siapo, and the tens of thousands of other Filipinos
whom the police had slaughtered in a bogus and murderous “drug
war” went through in the mercy of supposed law enforcers, or the
atrocious experience of Mindanao under two years of martial law.
For the survivors of Ferdinand Marcos’ brutal regime, it is a
throwback to the dark days of dictatorship when even the thoughts
and emotions of a person were and could be policed by the State—a
scenario lifted straight out of Orwellian dystopia and China’s
realities. Once again, we are restricted from freely expressing our
condemnation, frustrations, and protestations over the willful
incompetence, impunity, and indifference exuded by the Duterte
government.
This leads me to ask now: should we still celebrate
Independence Day in this time of terror?
At a time when our countrymen grapple with the inanities
and loopholes of the “New Normal” so their families won’t die from
hunger—if not from the virus’ infection—and face a draconian law
which practically criminalizes the smallest act of defiance, should
this “independence” still mean anything to us?
MY ANSWER IS YES.
Independence should not be an idea frozen in time, nor
should it be a memento merely displayed in museums or shown
briefly in historical documentaries. Independence is an emotional
INDEPENDENCE IN A TIME OF TERROR • 15
fervor, an idea we are tasked to uphold and fight for in times of
tyrannical rule. It is an ideal for which our heroes—from Rizal and
Bonifacio to Luna and Sakay—have immolated their lives.
Independence is a social construct that should bind us
together as a nation.
Certainly, the Terror Bill’s impending enactment into
law, or China’s continuing encroachment of our country, or
the socioeconomic hardships buttressed by the pandemic and
Duterte’s illogical response to present-day crises, may weaken our
appreciation of independence, liberation, democracy, human rights,
and freedom as vital principles in our collective lives.
Yet, independence does not die. Not even when all freedom-
fighters are murdered.
When we choose every day to continue fighting against the
callousness, to further the battle against the tyrannies of power,
imperialist domination, and poverty, to think and express ourselves
freely even if that means courting the ire of the tyrant in Malacañang,
that makes independence alive—notwithstanding the imminent
legislation of state terrorism.
When we choose to live and act freely, without the bounds
of this regime’s reign of terror, our independence shall continue to
live in us.
[Originally published on Rappler, June 17, 2020 4:10 PM.]

THE PARADOX OF DEMOCRACY
“Democracy represents the disbelief in all great men and
in all elite societies: everybody is everybody else’s equal,
‘At bottom we are all herd and mob.”
—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, “The Will to Power”
BEFORE CALLING THIS A DAY, let me write down what I believe is the
paradox now faced by our besieged democracy.
In a concise but sharp article for The Atlantic, journalist Sheila
Coronel described the conviction of Rappler’s Chief Executive Officer
and executive order Maria Ressa and former Rappler researcher and
writer Reynaldo Santos, Jr. on flimsy charges of cyber-libel in the
spirit of the claim that their verdict, in effect, snuffs out Philippine
democracy.
This goes against another equally sturdy point raised by a
few freedom-loving citizens, a journalist and Philippines Graphic
editor-in-chief Joel Pablo Salud, that democracy does not die with
these subsequent occurrences in the parched land where Rodrigo
Duterte rules with impunity.
Yet, the question I wanted to raise lies in neither statement.
It’s a question borne out of one seemingly inconsequential
sentence on Coronel’s piece—the one where she wrote that her first
connection with Ressa was forged in 1986, in an era of what she
succinctly wrote as “democratic rebirth” after 20 years of Ferdinand
Marcos’ brutal dictatorship.
Here’s the question: do we even have a democracy to cherish,
to begin with?
Popular imagination of democracy involves a vibrant civil
THE PARADOX OF DEMOCRACY • 17
society, strong institutions, entrenched requisites of checks-and-
balances, a free press, and constitutional safeguards on civil and
political rights.
Nothing wrong with that.
In fact, that spirit infuses the draft that became what we
now defend as the 1987 Constitution. (Note: The Charter has no
expiry date unless Duterte’s Congress super-majorities succeed in
usurping influence to push through with Charter Change.)
But here’s the catch: on a broader scope of definition, the
Philippines was—and is still—far from realizing genuine democracy,
in the most basic of its spirit.
WHILE DEBATES ON THE MERITS OF Ressa’s conviction and even the

constitutionality of the anti-terror bill rage on, landlessness and an
impending agricultural crisis stalk farmers in the countryside. The
novel coronavirus pandemic’s browbeating of the economy leaves
workers in the throes of sudden retrenchment or unemployment
if not even lover wages. Students now stand at the crossroads of
deciding whether or not to pursue education through alternative,
although exclusive, means. Even the established view that rape is
caused by rapists alone, neither by mini-skirts nor revealing clothes,
are now put into question by—to borrow novelist Lualhati Bautista’s
words in Dekada ‘70: “male chauvinist pigs.”
To stretch the point further, even the most virulent acts of
trampling upon basic democratic rights persisted long after Marcos
was gone—from Mendiola massacre in 1987, less than a month
before People Power’s first anniversary, to the rampant extrajudicial
murders and abductions of activists and journalists under Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo’s atrocious regime, up to the same degree of
political persecution and unresolved killings under Benigno S.
Aquino III’s administration (remember the Lumad killings in 2015
and the Kidapawan massacre?).
In fact, some of the fiercest generals and lieutenants of the
Duterte government—or its policies—hailed from the administrations
before his, who ascended to power from the ashes of the Marcos
regime. The generals in his National Task Force to End the Local
Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), the grandest machinery of
state terrorism under Duterte, have already figured in some of the
most difficult undertakings, Gloria Arroyo and Aquino.
Eduardo Año is implicated in the enforced disappearance of
activist Jonas Burgos and the Paquibato massacre under Aquino;
Hermogenes Esperon, the regime’s National Security Adviser, was
the chief driver of Arroyo’s murderous Oplan Bantay Laya counter-
insurgency pogrom. Ricardo Visayas, Duterte’s first military chief-
of-staff, was touted by human rights groups as “Palparan’s protege”
who figured in the 2004 Hacienda Luisita massacre that killed 7
farmers. The very model of NTF-ELCAC stemmed from Arroyo’s Inter-
Agency Legal Action Group (IALAG), created through Executive Order
493 in 2006 that became the factory of trumped-up charges heaped
against activists and critics of Mrs. Arroyo’s regime.
And have we forgotten about Berdugo Jovito Palparan’s
reign of terror and the brutal Ampatuan massacre?
On June 26, it will be 14 years since University of the
Philippines students Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan went
missing after men under Palparan’s watch abducted them, along
with a farmer, in Bulacan in 2006.
These atrocities happened years after the supposed
“democratic rebirth” that ushered in after the martial law
dictatorship was turfed out of power.
THIS BRINGS US BACK TO DUTERTE, the prodigal son of Philippine

democracy who took the degree of fascism to the highest level—
thirty thousand times higher than Marcos’ despotic regime.
In a time when both the economic and sociopolitical
rights of Filipinos have been teetering on the edge of liquidation,
we should face the imminent question of our times: by vowing to
“defend democracy” from the relentless assaults of state fascism,
do we even realize that that democracy is incomplete at best, and
an illusion at worst?
Democracy, as a concept, has proven itself to be one
binding social construct across social classes; the example of Edsa’s
“peaceful uprising” brought this to the fore. Yet, the actualization
of that democracy is another thing—and this is where, I believe, we
collectively failed; but, more so, the pathetic excuses for leaders we
THE PARADOX OF DEMOCRACY • 19
now have—who banked on the promise of rushing to democracy’s
defense only to slug it out in a single whimper.
Because this similar “democracy” was distorted by post-EDSA
administrations who refused to push for agrarian reform, national
industrialization, the unconditional release of political prisoners
(and in fact added them in numbers that gradually topped the
magnitude of Marcos’ concentration camps), the dismantling of
contractualization, and perpetuated the abuse of indigenous
peoples struggling to defend their ancestral lands.
These are the same presidents who sued journalists for
libel, closed down Manila Times because of an unflattering report,
advocated for a draconian cybercrime law with a dangerous
insertion of libel provisions, arrested activists on the perilous
but false premise of “anti-communism,” and shunned warnings
from the rights community (and even the United Nations) about
the deterioration of human rights in a manner that Duterte only
exceeded in terms of vitriol.
Post-Marcos presidents only pretended to be in defense
of human rights—while Duterte reversed the trend and publicly
denounced the idea of bourgeois-democratic rights to further his
vision of authoritarianism.
Hence, how should we define democracy before we trumpet
the slogan of its defense is integral because it practically shifts the
guidepost upon which we base our current struggles.
Democracy is not democracy when a few overlords dominate this
country—in all spheres.
IN ANY CASE, THE RECENT ASSAULTS on that fragile ground we ascribe

to be “democracy,” from ABS-CBN’s shutdown amidst a militaristic
lockdown to Maria Ressa’s conviction—should push us even
further into asking hard questions about an ideal we supposedly
defend against the caprices of the tyrant in Malacañang, because
ascertaining if this democracy is a genuine one and not a mere
bourgeoisie ideal completes our job of taking the defense of this
democracy into our own hands.
More so, in the struggle to achieve and reclaim this democracy
from forces that seek to diminish it, there has to be a recognition
also of the need to defend whatever is left of our democratic spaces
under Duterte and all presidents before him—because, without
these basic rights that the 1987 Constitution enshrined, we would
not be able to attain the deeper democratic aspirations that go
beyond individual rights and liberties. I would not even be able to
write this if not for the democratic rights we are tasked, now more
than ever, to safeguard—the same rights Duterte and all other post-
EDSA governments trampled upon and transgressed, time and again.
In our struggle against today’s gradual slide to totalitarianism, the
paradox of democracy should not be left out wanting—unless we
don’t give a rat’s ass about this irony biting us on the back even long
after Duterte is out of presidential power.

DEMOCRACY IS NOT
A PIECE OF PAPER
“There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.”
—HANNAH ARENDT
ON JUNE 3 LAST YEAR, the House of Representatives chose to do

the opposite of its original raison d’être for existence: it voted, on
third and final reading, to throw out the constitutionally-sanctioned
rights of the people and allow the passage of the law which certainly
delineates any form of resistance to an unjust government as a form
of “terrorism.”
In order to completely grasp the extent of this law’s assault on
the people, we do not even to debate about the legal gobbledygook
with which the anti-terror bill cloaks Rodrigo Duterte’s fascism.
We only have to see into which hands these extensive, broad, and
overarching powers would be entrusted for implementation.
The proposed law, among other things, designates the
creation of an Anti-Terrorism Council whose main task is to oversee
the law’s materialization. Guess who are the people included in this
council?
• Rodrigo Duterte
• Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea
• National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon
• Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana
• Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra
• ICT Secretary Gringo Honasan
• Interior Secretary Eduardo Año
• Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin, Jr.
• Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez
• AMLC Executive Director Mel George Bacela
Only four of them—Locsin, Guevarra, Dominguez, and
Bacela—had no military background. (Duterte and Medialdea were
political animals since Day One.)
The rest of them, former generals. But not just generals:
they’re the worst of their kind, who had gruesome record of
extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and other forms of
state terrorism in their tenure.
Have we forgotten about Jonas Burgos, the peasant-
activist who was abducted by men who worked under Año? Have
we forgotten about the 1,206 extrajudicial killings that happened
under Gloria Arroyo’s brutish regime, half of them under Esperon’s
watch as Armed Forces of the Philippines’ chief-of-staff? Have we
forgotten about Honasan and the thousands of martial law activists
that were tortured by his ilk, led by Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel V.
Ramos?
These are the people whom this dangerous law assigned to
decide whether someone qualifies as a terrorist or not.
BUT THAT’S NOT WHERE THE BLOOD TRAIL ENDS: under the Duterte
regime, Esperon, Lorenzana, Año, as well as the other generals and
civilian lapdogs included in the witch-hunt machinery that is the
National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Conflict, led
the fiercest forms of red-tagging and vilification campaigns against
legal, progressive organizations who had howled at the numerous
anti-people policies enacted by Malacañang—from extrajudicial
killings to subservience to China and the United States, up to TRAIN
Law’s burden and the illegal arrests of activists, writers, artists,
journalists, and critics of the regime.
In fact, in one of the witch-hunt hearings called by Senator
Bato Dela Rosa to supposedly “inquire” about missing activists
allegedly kidnapped to join the New People’s Army, it was Año
who suggested that the country should revive the dreaded Anti-
Subversion Law—repealed under Ramos’ administration—to
supposedly put an end to the Communist Party of the Philippines.
DEMOCRACY IS NOT A PIECE OF PAPER • 23
In Ano’s eyes, personalities who espouse militant and radical ideas
are “communists.”
Hence, do we actually trust these people to implement the
anti-terror law, with all the expansive powers that it is offering,
without a sleight of abuse?
Only naivete causes people to think that the law is more
powerful than the people whose main task is to enforce it. That
letters imprinted on paper can actually stop the military from
committing whatever it wants—under “anti-terrorism’s” pretext.
Do not be hoodwinked into thinking that the anti-terror law is only
going after the “terrorists”—because, with these kind of butchers
in power who maintain social distancing from dissent, who needs
actual terrorists?
WHEN THE DRUG WAR KILLINGS STARTED IN 2016, many Filipinos

resigned to the belief that it is only the “drug addicts” who are
being killed. In 1933, when the Reichstag fire allowed Adolf Hitler to
usurp power through a declaration of the state of emergency, many
Germans were led to believe that the Jews had to be exterminated.
Upon Ferdinand Marcos’ declaration of martial law in September
1972, more than half of the populace went silent and looked the
other way as thousands of activists, critics, and dissenters of the
Marcos regime were hauled off to stockades and safe houses to be
tortured, if not killed or disappeared right away.
Should we be led to think, at this time, that this bill serves
our interest?
Let’s not even count into the discussion how ambiguous the
phrases and provisions in the law were written, as if to actually give
the State a huge leeway to do everything it wishes, so long as it falls
under the purported banner of “anti-terrorism.” The mere fact that
the law authorizes people like Ano, Esperon, and Duterte himself to
define which, or who, is “terrorist,” or distinguish what constitutes
terrorism from what does not, is the final nail in the coffin of our
democracy.
What I am manifesting here is not a defense of terrorism
by protesting the railroading of the anti-terror bill. It is actually the
otherwise: in raising howls and screams of protest over the bill, we
actually try to prevent the actual terrorists—those with the badge and
camouflaged uniforms—to continue with their euphemistic forms of
state-sanctioned terrorism, because this law clearly greenlights all
imaginable forms of abuses under this regime’s watch.
Truth be told, this law is not a legislation of anti-terrorism.
It is a declaration of battle—between the Duterte regime and the
people. It is a declaration of war against the people, whose collective
power to overthrow tyrants Malacañang surely anticipates. With
all the issues that piled up in the people’s consciousness since
July 2016, with all the thousands of deaths incurred by Duterte’s
disastrous and deadly polices, with all the hardship and oppression
endured by our people because Duterte coddles the interests of
his imperialist overlords, the bureaucrat capitalists, hacienderos,
criminal syndicates, and right-wing political forces advocating to
a return to tyrannical rule, definitely, the people shows that it is
more than ready to rebel and make themselves seditious of this
anti-Filipino government.
The anti-terror bill provides Duterte’s legal arsenal a new
weapon to trample that nascent revolution. Hence, protesting this
law is our final shot at defending our rights in legal avenues.
But because 173 traitors and 29 cowards chose to betray the people,
they practically closed the legal (by legal, I mean the literal crafting
of laws) avenue of resistance.
Beyond the legal sheath with which Duterte has now the
power to employ, let us grapple with the question of where the
struggle to block this law from enactment should lead us.
Many of us feel despair. Some, even fear. The rage is ever-
present. (On June 4, there were indignation protests in UP Los Baños
and University Avenue in UP Diliman to express outrage over the
anti-terror bill’s impending legislation.)
LET THIS BE KNOWN: the anti-terror bill’s passage will not spell the
end of democracy. Sure, the State’s terrorism would be far more
ferocious in its manifestations once this law has taken effect.
Warrantless arrests, illegal wiretapping, more extrajudicial killings,
more red-tagging, and more cases of coercion would reign supreme
in our collective lives once Duterte’s signature is affixed in the law.
DEMOCRACY IS NOT A PIECE OF PAPER • 25
But democracy is not a piece of paper. It’s far more than a
law. Democracy is us.
Democracy lives when the people, despite the legal
constrictions into the free speech and other constitutional rights
in the Constitution, push through with manifold forms of resistance
to fight back against the despotic regime. Democracy lives when
writers, cultural workers, journalists, academics, and activists
continue to hold discussions in the open to condemn Duterte’s
regime for what it really is: the worst incarnation of totalitarianism
since Hitler. Democracy lives when we, as a people, faced with a
choice of bread or liberty, have chosen to put ourselves in the line
of fire to defend what actually makes us human and alive: our civil
liberties.
Democracy cannot be legislated, because it lives where we
choose to defend it.
Democracy does not end when a law tries to extinguish it.
Democracy does not end when murderous generals started another
Khmer Rogue-like spree of executions of “enemies of the state” (or,
in this context, “terrorists”). Democracy is only snuffed out when
we do not choose the avenue of resistance—be it in the streets, on
social media, or in its written form—because in resistance, in our
collective resolution to pay the highest price for freedom, that’s
where democracy thrives.
WITH THE PASSAGE OF THIS LAW, democracy has not been killed. It
has only taken a different form. It now hides in its own succor, taking
on new ways of manifesting itself to throw a fist at the dictator, and
hopefully to put an end to the tyrant’s madness. To echo the words
of Philippines Graphic’s former editor-in-chief, Joel Pablo Salud,
democracy has gone underground. And with that, the battle has
shifted: from the parliamentary, the combat is now in the streets
and in the court of public opinion and history.
That, I believe, is where we should all of us now start
mobilizing ourselves.
Tonight, let us mourn. Let us envelop our fears. Let us
shout, and curse, and resign to desperation over the mockery that
the Duterte-controlled House of Representatives had chosen to
exercise. Let us scream and rage against the travesty that is the
Duterte regime.
Tomorrow, we rise again to struggle. Democracy lives in the
fiercest of our battles.
In the final act, lest we forget, it is not democracy that
history tramples upon and sweeps under the rug. Tyrants will always
have their downfall — and Duterte is never an exception to this curse
of despotism.
RENDEZVOUS WITH MARCOS
The dictator was right about history.
But so are we—we are not off his hook yet.
HISTORY’S SHADOWBOXING WITH FERDINAND E. MARCOS did not

cease on February 25, 1986.
One could posit an initial claim that with the late dictator
being dead for three decades already, his death because of lupus
erythematosus had swept any issues and matters that he might
have still had with history under the rug—for good. But such is not
the case, not when the battle for his history remains an ongoing
one because his kin stubbornly inches their way through his hollow
heroism.
Marcos uttered in a recorded interview back in Hawaii
during his first years of self-exile: “History is not made with me yet.”
The dictator was right about history. But so are we—we are not off
his hook yet.
Four years ago, a chopper that bore his waxed corpse flew
from Batac, Ilocos Norte to Libingan ng mga Bayani to punctuate, in
a sneaky way that portrayed his thieving memory, a “hero’s” burial
that had to be kept and conducted away from the public’s eye to
avoid meriting enough rage to have that same body exhumed from
the cemetery in a manner as fastidious as was his burial.
It’s not a stretch of logic or imagination to perceive why the
Marcos family, with all the expansive power it wields over Ilocandia,
would risk mass actions that would block their dictator-patriarch’s
way into Libingan only to insist on achieving something like a
chance for that burial that Marcos’ own tyrannical life had forfeited:
the whole masterplan of their return to Malacañang would have the
resurrection of their vile legacy at the apex, where Marcos’ burial
signifies his brand as a “hero.”
Didn’t Marcos’ ouster in 1986 during the People Power
uprising settle his designation in the long-running course of our
history once and for all? His furtive burial as a fake hero ascertained
that to be a naïve hypothesis. While People Power’s historical
judgment in EDSA was clear—that the Marcos dictatorship was so
intricately evil, so incorrigibly despicable, that a mass uprising
had to be the country’s way out of his dictatorial appendages—the
officialdom of that judgment was not.
Or until Rodrigo Roa Duterte won the presidency.
DUTERTE WAS NOT THE FIRST PRESIDENT to honor the Marcos

family’s graces in exchange for the dictator’s “hero’s” burial. When
Joseph Estrada won the presidency in 1998, his regime opened up
the chance of the dictator’s burial in Libingan. However, by some
quirk of fate, Estrada’s ouster through the People Power movement’s
recurrence that originally dethroned Marcos also threw that chance
for him out of the window. The next two administrations, especially
that of the son of Marcos’ arch-nemesis, dimmed any hopes for
the Marcos clan—until the 2016 elections, particularly Duterte’s
victory, puffed up another chance for the dictator to finally earn that
glorious historical culmination that he so clearly does not deserve.
And here the Philippines is, once again: faced with Marcos’
history long after his ouster and demise.
The late tyrant’s burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani was
not the sole signifier that Marcos’ history unfurls again before our
stage of historical spectacle. Duterte’s unfolding as a nosy dictator
who would not have qualms about killing off thousands in the name
of his unholy wars or his repetitive allusions about constructing a
dictatorship as his Final Solution for the country’s social malaises is
one ample evidence of our continuing saga, our continuing tussle,
with Marcos and his legacy.
Suppose there is one arena in which the People Power
uprising that turfed him out of the dictatorial throne had failed. In
that case, it is in extricating the country of remnants of Marcosian
RENDEZVOUS WITH MARCOS • 39
legacy and influence. Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino’s brand of liberal
democracy—punctuated by farmers’ blood spilled in Mendiola and
hollow reforms that culminated in mere cosmetic reforms without
substantial revolutionary alterations in Filipino society—strived to
rid the bureaucracy of Marcos’ malignant spirit. Cory’s former justice
secretary, Franklin Drilon, dubbed it as “de-Marcosification.”
But that project failed, and miserably at that—specifically
when Cory’s first order of business in the immediate aftermath of
her ascension to the presidency was the reinstatement of two key
personalities inflicted upon thousands of dissenters the fascist
wrath of martial law. A huge number of cronies and associates who
benefited from the Marcos regime’s thievery of the nation’s coffers
remained scot-free through the six post-Marcos presidencies, and
no less than the dictator’s widow still relishes liberty even as a
conviction hangs over her consciousness. State power, influence, and
wherewithal were all exploited to polish Marcos’s “heroic” legacy
by aiding the Marcos family’s return to the political battlefield and
evasion of prison’s justice and law—at the expense of the tyrant’s
victims.
Duterte’s presidency did no more than placating protests
against the revivification of Marcos’ discredited legacy with his
endorsement of festooning Marcos’ corpse with a “hero” tag—and
with his revival of a Marcos-like political dispensation marked
by despotism, nepotism, and populism. Where killings and state
violence once characterized the Marcos martial law’s atrocious
heritage, Duterte’s legacy is awash with the blood of more than
30,000 people killed by his Marcosian brand of fascism; where
Anti-Subversion Law and a host of other legal arsenals once aided
Marcos’ pursuit of silencing his critics, Duterte’s Terror Law and a
task force whose role does not extend beyond the confines of state-
sanctioned McCarthyism and witch-hunt of activists embellished
his scheme of stifling dissent—the idea for which Duterte merely
borrowed, if not inherited, from Marcos’ tyrannical blueprint.
IN OTHER WORDS, we are forced to face the ghost of Marcos and

historical retrospect not only because his history is undergoing
serious threats of revisionism from his family and their entire
machinery of apologists and troll armies—but more so because
Duterte’s tyranny resuscitates Marcos’ very history. In fact, on almost
the whole spectrum, Duterte’s record had already outdone Marcos’s
intensity. But that matters little, for one fact remains: Marcos’ history,
as it is being rewritten by vile actors seeking to impose his family’s
political vengeance, is being played out in Duterte’s character again.
And so, here we stand, once more staring straight at a dead
dictator and his farcical legacy—with another dictator honoring his
idol by securing him a sacred place of burial and by repeating, if
not improving to stentorian levels, the model of his dictatorship.
History shadowboxes with Marcos again—in the attempt to diminish
his fictional airbrushing of history to his favor and the anticipated
legitimization of this revisionism by Duterte’s resuscitation of the
Marcos dictatorship on his own.
Three decades after his dethronement, our history’s biggest
enemy is still Ferdinand Marcos, only taking on new forms and
avenues of distortion.
It’s only a matter of choice on the people’s end to finally put
an end to history’s apocalyptic rendezvous with a dead dictator’s
legacy by relegating Marcos (and Duterte) to their proper places
in history: on the footnotes of national memory, buried under
national oblivion, consigned to a pantheon of huge shame where
reviled despots deserve to be conferred with dishonor and utter
degradation.

DUTERTE AS DISASTER SYMBOL
Distraction, deception, disinformation, indecision, and despotism
are the five main mixes of the Duterte disaster.
WHILE ENTIRE CITIES AND PROVINCES WERE SUBMERGED in

floodwaters caused by the typhoon, Rodrigo Roa Duterte uttered
these words: “Gusto kong pumunta doon, makipaglangoy nga sa
inyo. Ang problema, pinipigilan ako kasi raw ‘pag namatay ako, isa
lang daw ang presidente.”
To a citizenry that had grown accustomed to the acoustics
of a dilly-dallying and incoherent presidency, it’s only a page out of
the Duterte playbook of incompetence. It’s another show of macho
posturing—to feign concern for those who are devastated by the
raging typhoon. But the image couldn’t come off any starker: while
Marikina residents, including their local chief executive, shout for
air rescue to escape muddy floodwaters from killing them, the
president is in official business of mocking the people’s collective
distress with a scornful jest. To make things worse, the president
was not even staying in Malacañang.
Of course, basic common sense and logic would tell anyone
that it is not part of any government official’s job description to
swim through floodwaters to show concern. That is actually empty
heroics. As Chief Executive of the entire bureaucracy, the primary job
of the president is to simply lead the mobilization of the national
government in assuaging the country’s despair vis-à-vis any crisis or
calamity. The mere fact that this fundamental aspect of presidential
leadership—something Duterte is very incapable of doing—still
has to be explained, particularly to his mindless fanatics, speaks
volumes about the severity of the disaster Duterte government.
From his regime’s first order of business—the sweeping
‘elimination’ of illegal drugs through a bloody drug war—to the
administration’s bungled response to the COVID-19 pandemic,
there has been one underlying theme that cuts through the fabric
of Duterte’s mismanagement of the country: his evident disdain
toward data, science, and rational leadership.
To stretch the point further, he has no qualms about
the leadership at all; the only thing that matters to his regime
is manufactured noise of public opinion to create his shallow
‘popularity’—and enough smokescreens to hide the thievery of the
country’s coffers.
ONCE AGAIN, THIS DISASTER REARED its ugly head through Duterte’s
initial response to Typhoon Ulysses’ devastation: a mockery of a
‘national address’ and aerial shots of Marikina and Rizal.
Until this writing, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and
Management Council (NDRRMC) has not even convened the Cabinet,
especially national government agencies relevant to disaster
response and management, to map out the government’s next steps
battling the typhoon’s despoliation. Yesterday, Interior Secretary
Eduardo Año himself told the media that Duterte ‘might’—this was
the word that appeared on Philippine Daily Inquirer’s news tweet—
hold an ‘emergency meeting’ to discuss the regime’s strategy in
mitigating the typhoon’s damage. No meeting had transpired yet,
despite the urgency.
In fact, some residents in Marikina and Rizal are still trapped
on the roofs or second-to-third floors of their submerged homes—
where the pandemic’s threat intersperses with the danger of being
drowned, contracting infections, or facing days’ worth of hunger that
the floodwaters pose on them—while waiting for air rescue. Isn’t this
enough of a picture to symbolize the Duterte regime’s despicable
inaction?
In the same ‘national address’ where he suggested that
he actually wanted to swim through floodwaters, Duterte tried
to pull off some sliver of assurance when he announced that the
national government possesses enough resources to deal with the
DUTERTE AS DISASTER SYMBOL • 33
crisis. Strikingly enough, a few hours before that already-belated
bolahan, no less than Marikina mayor Marcy Teodoro himself aired
a desperate call for aid but addressed it to the private sector.
Shouldn’t he be calling the national government’s attention? This
comes from the chief executive of a city that invested in disaster
mitigation and response to avoid another Ondoy-like devastation
from afflicting them. It shows the total score on this inutile regime.
And what about Duterte’s mollycoddles? Environment
Undersecretary Benny Antiporda, together with Metropolitan Manila
Development Authority’s spokesperson Celine Pialogo, was busy
promoting the ‘stability’ of that stupid dolomite sands poured over
a little portion of Manila Bay—while thousands flee the typhoon’s
wrath in a do-or-die situation.
In the face of uprooted trees, impassable roads, and entire
subdivisions drenched with muddy floodwaters, Antiporda has this
to say: “dolomite lang ang matatag!”
IN THE MIDDLE OF LANDSLIDES, FLOODS, and entire communities

engulfed by darkness, who even cares about the dolomite sands?
And what was his business flaunting that off—while thousands of
Filipinos suffer from an uncertain, flooded future?
This similar image of a discordant government, where
the very ‘leader’ expected to lead the State in steering through
calamities and disasters is hiding from the public’s eye, had shown
itself when four other cataclysms before this one, including a
supertyphoon, ravaged Luzon. It had shown itself through almost
nine months of bedraggled lockdown imposed by Duterte to combat
the pandemic. This disaster that is Duterte’s own incompetence
had been browbeating the country since his election in 2016—in all
aspects of society.
It doesn’t help the country at all that Duterte exudes almost
the same level of aversion to data-driven governance, scientific and
evidence-based management, and basic leadership as that of his
populist contemporaries across the world.
CONTEXTUALIZING THIS DISASTROUS GOVERNANCE in the face of

the Duterte administration’s purported disaster mitigation and
management efforts, the picture becomes bleaker. Early in January,
Malacañang moved to shut down Project NOAH (Nationwide
Operational Assessment of Hazard), a flagship research program
on disaster reduction and mitigation initiated by Noynoy Aquino’s
administration (to his credit). Project NOAH was a huge leap in
preparing the country to face worsening disasters brought by
climate change.
According to no less than the Department of Science and
Technology itself, the Project NOAH’s existence was “in response
to President Aquino’s instructions to put in place a responsive
program for disaster prevention and mitigation, specifically, for the
Philippines’ warning agencies to be able to provide a 6-hour lead-
time warning to vulnerable communities against impending floods
and to use advanced technology to enhance current geo-hazard
vulnerability maps.”
The project’s main mission? To “undertake disaster science
research and development, advance the use of cutting edge
technologies and recommend innovative information services in
government’s disaster prevention and mitigation efforts.”
But all that had gone to waste when Duterte chose to do
away with this important scientific initiative—on top of longstanding
budgetary delays that afflicted the project.
Though the research project was reported to not receive
funding since 2015, the final nail in the coffin was the Duterte
regime’s decision to cut off its funding for good and disapprove of
the request for extending its lifeline.
This fatal decision had two-pronged dilemmas: the quest
for the scientists’ sustenance and the lack of legislation to fully
institutionalize Project NOAH into a separate agency working on its
own field. Imagine if the proposed “Project NOAH Bill” came into
being.
For the project’s Executive Director, Dr. Mahar Lagmay,
Project NOAH’s shutdown came across more as an issue of ‘human
resources’: of how skilled but unpaid and overworked scientists,
who could have worked harder to develop the research program
with better incentives, had left long before the pilot program could
have even taken off.
IT APPEARS THAT PROJECT NOAH’S SHUTDOWN has become an issue
as well of the country’s overall syndrome of laxity in the face of
intensifying climate disasters—and an important symbol of both
how Duterte’s government is not hinged upon science and how
disinterested it is in heeding science’s call for development.
Budget allocations for the flagship disaster agency’s funds—
the country’s calamity funds—also echoes an unspeakable amount
of slashing. In 2017, his second year in office, Duterte’s regime cut
the calamity funds by more than half: from a whopping P38 billion
in 2016, it dropped to a mere P15 billion by the next year. While the
budget rose to P25 billion in 2018, the regime cut it back to P20
billion by 2019—and it further lost P4 billion by this year, earmarking
it at a measly amount of P16 billion. No wonder the government was
caught flat-footed by the ongoing slew of catastrophes: in terms of
data and budget, Duterte is both found wanting.
In the face of abominable budget cuts in the country’s
national risk reduction and management fund, the president’s
secretive “intelligence funds” earned some P4 billion in the last
two consecutive fiscal years. Meanwhile, while legislators in the
Duterte-controlled House of Representatives are handing out P19
billion for National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed
Conflict (NTF-ELCAC)—the regime’s foremost witch-hunt agency on
dissenters—in the 2021 budget, the opposite is bound to happen with
the country’s science and technology funds: P1 billion were slashed
from the Philippine Astronomical, Geographical, and Astronomical
Services Administration (PAG-ASA), while the Philippine Institute of
Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs)’s budget lost P330 million.
Notice how this regime, in budgetary terms, deem red-
tagging as a more plausible budget item than the country’s flagship
agencies in terms of disaster mitigation and response?
It is hardly “disaster prevention or mitigation” when the
State rolled back a flagship research program for a sordid excuse—
lack of budget, the same pretext that it exploits to justify incurring
billions upon billions of foreign debt supposedly to fight off COVID-
19’s spread—or when Duterte’s regime places a greater premium on
terror-tagging and fascism rather than on more urgent demands for
scientific approaches in withstanding the intertwined problems of
natural calamities amidst a pandemic.
THE DISASTER THAT IS DUTERTE’S REGIME MANIFESTS when it trades

science and evidence with bloody tactics of his “war.”
When the drug war started, a mega-rehabilitation facility
in Nueva Ecija was envisioned for construction. The facility did
not materialize—and the price of the lack of any rehabilitation
perspective into Duterte’s dirty, bogus, and farcical drug war were
more than 30,000 lives killed by a rogue, almost criminal, police
force. In contrast, ninja cops and notorious drug lords remain scot-
free.
When the pandemic started to strike the country, Duterte
downplayed the looming threat with the same vile metaphor he
met Typhoon Ulysses’ destruction: mockery. He called coronavirus
an “idiot” and threatened to slap the virus. When cases started to
rapidly rise by March, he created an Inter-Agency Task Force whose
members were neither scientists nor medical professionals.
For almost nine months now, the country’s botched
response to the pandemic was bobbled by its nature as “militarist,”
not medical: retired military generals whose bloodied records
included salvaging lives (or abductions, as in Jonas Burgos’ case)
were anointed to “save” lives from the virus. No wonder, Duterte’s
first marching order against the pandemic was to “shoot them dead”
instead of mass testing.
Because this regime hardly believes in science and data,
the Department of Health made it a habit to fudge the pandemic’s
statistics to hide the real score behind the coronavirus’ rising cases
and fabricate the false notion that the country is winning against
COVID-19; until now, after five typhoons’ worth of devastation
mingled with the pandemic’s ever-present threat, the citizenry’s
future in overcoming cataclysmic damage and the pandemic has
merely become darker by the minute.
Distraction, deception, disinformation, indecision, and
despotism are the five main mixes of the Duterte disaster. By hook
or by crook, by character assassination or actual murder, the regime
will try to stifle all voices and manifestations of dissent because it
envisages all critical voices as those of “enemies of the state”—and
to turn away the public’s attention from the festering social scourge,
the Duterte regime will mete out distracting claims or actions (the
dolomite sands are an example) and deceive the gullible public
with disinformation helmed over by underground troll networks
operating in Beijing. It will remain indecisive and merely let the
thing pass by without some form of resolution or accountability to
cap everything off.
In unnatural disasters and calamities’ context, the
distraction is provided with fatuous, unscientific, or illogical claims,
jokes, and even threats spewed out by no less than the bumbling
dictator himself over televised addresses. At the same time, troll
networks strive to airbrush the real score about the regime’s failures
with fake news and inarticulate claims.
On the sidelines, the generals would mobilize NTF-ELCAC and
its own brand of drama queens and despotic acolytes to threaten
activists and critics with death or smear their personality with
terror-tagging, drown out legitimate criticisms, or condemnations.
Finally, everything ends with resiliency porn propagated across
different platforms to wash out any chance at holding the regime
accountable.
For four disastrous and murderous years, this cycle has
been going on—during the rest of the public slit each other’s throats
because the division propped out fanaticism for the tyrant.
CALLOUS IS THE MOST ACCURATE ELUCIDATION for the cataclysm that

is Rodrigo Duterte’s regime: a fatal and fatalistic mixture of apathy,
fear, and blinding lights allow it to escape the public’s nascent
outrage over Duterte’s longstanding policy actions of murder,
incompetence, subservience to foreign powers, fascism, and anti-
people pogrom. All disasters that struck the country from 2016 and
continue bedeviling the country beyond this tyrant will boil down to
one great disaster: the Duterte regime itself.
Duterte was not the first politician or president to promote
discordance in governance. But others, including the late dictator
whom he emulates, had the smokescreen of pretension. Duterte
dares not to hide the worst of his vile values and actions. In the
open, as if daring the public to try overpowering him, he acts like
a Mafia lord whose solution to any and all menaces lies on state
violence—and when he screws up, his trolls and legion of heartless
fanatics will rescue his image.
Duterte promotes the worst in Filipinos: incompetence,
violence, and apathy in the face of social desolation.
Five typhoons, several earthquakes, and a raging pandemic
after, time runs out for the people. Unlike in the United States—
where a chance of voting out a moron, racist, and Islamophobic of
a president is available—Filipinos have no other electoral chance
of avenging themselves from years of corrupt politics, fascism, and
inutile leadership by wiping the Duterte disaster out. No more lives
could be placed in the line of danger, sacrificed, or killed before
2022 arrives. There is only one way out for a people long badgered
by this cruel regime’s bullying, crimes, ineptitude, bloodlust, and
populist-authoritarian disaster.
To save the country from further Holocaust, Duterte’s
despotic regime has to go.

Karl Not Marx

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Karl Not Marx

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Karl, not Marx: Essays on Rebellion,

Liberty, and Struggle

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Cover photo from Owin Perez

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STARTING FROM THE TIME OF MY FATHER’S DEMISE, my whole life

BUT LITTLE DID I EXPECT that I’ll stand a chance to win.

AFTER THE COMPETITION’S CUT-OFF, that official furtively sneaked in

MY INDUCTION INTO JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL wasn’t smooth-sailing

MY STREAK DID NOT STOP SINCE THEN. Consecutively, I bagged awards

BUT ONE LESSON, UNTIL NOW, STANDS OUT: journalism is never

STAND YOUR GROUND. Three words that defined my journey into

SINCE DAY ONE OF HIS PRESIDENCY, on July 1, 2016, I was a Duterte

IN DUTERTE’S SECOND YEAR IN OFFICE, in 2018, I formally joined an

RODRIGO DUTERTE’S REGIME DOESN’T ESCAPE IRONY.

THREATS AND INTIMIDATION AGAINST PROGRESSIVES continue to

ON NOVEMBER 22, 2018, Duterte signed Memorandum Order No 32,

[Originally published on Rappler, November 19, 2019 10:28 AM PHT.]

SHOULD WE STILL LOOK FORWARD to Independence Day at this time?

[Originally published on Rappler, June 17, 2020 4:10 PM.]

WHILE DEBATES ON THE MERITS OF Ressa’s conviction and even the

THIS BRINGS US BACK TO DUTERTE, the prodigal son of Philippine

IN ANY CASE, THE RECENT ASSAULTS on that fragile ground we ascribe

ON JUNE 3 LAST YEAR, the House of Representatives chose to do

WHEN THE DRUG WAR KILLINGS STARTED IN 2016, many Filipinos

HISTORY’S SHADOWBOXING WITH FERDINAND E. MARCOS did not

DUTERTE WAS NOT THE FIRST PRESIDENT to honor the Marcos

IN OTHER WORDS, we are forced to face the ghost of Marcos and

WHILE ENTIRE CITIES AND PROVINCES WERE SUBMERGED in

IN THE MIDDLE OF LANDSLIDES, FLOODS, and entire communities

CONTEXTUALIZING THIS DISASTROUS GOVERNANCE in the face of

THE DISASTER THAT IS DUTERTE’S REGIME MANIFESTS when it trades

CALLOUS IS THE MOST ACCURATE ELUCIDATION for the cataclysm that

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