FIlipinos for nothing

There’s a part of me that wants to stop beating up on the Dutertes, lest I be accused of being part of the Marcos propaganda machine (which stands to benefit from all this anyway, whatever I say), but like the gift that keeps on giving, the D’s and their people just won’t let me let them be. Being no lawyer, I’ll have nothing to say on the legality or otherwise of the former president’s arrest and forced departure for the Netherlands – except to opine, as others have, that justice sometimes works in mysterious ways.

My beef for this week is how the Duterte Agitprop Department (let’s call it DAD, like Elon Musk’s DOGE) has spun the whole ICC affair in the public sphere. These days, you never expect people to stand on the truth and nothing but the truth in these political matters. But you do hope for some degree of sophistication, for the kind of professional finesse that will justify the multimillions that any PR crew tasked with saving Rodrigo Duterte’s skin – or barring that, at least his reputation – will have been budgeted.

There are three propositions by the Duterte camp that I want to focus on, among many others that have arisen since the arrest.

First, his supposed global allies and endorsers.

Donald Trump, for example, reportedly took precious time out from dismantling American democracy to declare that “We will protect Rodrigo and the Filipino people from the oppression you are facing…. I and the United States will not allow any of our allies and friends to suffer, and we will impose sanctions against the Marcos Administration for the unlawful act they did.” Why, he had even called Xi Jinping – not about tariffs, not about Taiwan, not about American forces in the Philippines – but about the “serious matter concerning our good friend Rodrigo.” For his part, Xi Jinping – who on a state visit to Manila did say “our relations have now seen a rainbow after the rain” in response to Duterte’s more prosaic “I simply love Xi Jinping!” – supposedly brought up the Duterte arrest and the ICC in his opening address to the Boao Forum for Asia. Not to be outdone, another Duterte hero, Vladimir Putin, was reported to have threatened (someone – not specified) with “grave consequences” for Duterte’s arrest, as it violated the Rome Statute (which Russia incidentally pulled out of in 2016).

It’s all good when a national leader of superlative virtue and achievement has been so badly wronged that the world takes notice and his peers rise up in alarm to protest the injustice. But really – Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, all of them prime candidates for the ICC’s hospitality (Putin already is, along with Benjamin Netanyahu)? Never mind that all these supposed endorsements turned out to be fake; they still elicited applause from the DDS faithful, which I suppose was the intended effect. Q: Would it have been too much to expect an endorsement from the likes of Pope Francis? A: Yes.

Second, that call for OFWs to stop remitting their earnings home in a “Zero-Remittance Week” protest.

Our overseas workers contributed nearly $40 billion to the Philippine economy last year, so someone at DAD must have figured it would be brilliant to prick that bubble in the name of remitting Duterte home. But yet again, really?

Granted, PRRD created the Department of Migrant Workers and the OFW Bank and brought home hundreds of thousands of OFWs during the pandemic. Former OWWA chief Hans Cacdac even called him “the father of OFWs.” I don’t doubt that the Duterte name has a lot of traction in our expatriate communities, and that flexing a bit of their economic power in a week-long protest will ring some alarm bells, but you might as well ask people to chop off a finger to prove their fealty. For how long do you imagine will Pinoys postpone housing amortizations, tuition payments, maintenance meds and grocery expenses to protest even the crucifixion of Jesus Christ?

Lastly, and perhaps closest to my propagandist’s heart, there’s that inexplicably vague “I am not a Filipino for nothing” slogan.

Sure, it sounds brave and bold – like it actually says and means something. But does it, really? I’ve been turning the statement around and around in my head and maybe I’m extraordinarily dense and unreceptive but I just don’t get it. In rhetoric, double negatives are often used to suggest or even emphasize the opposite (the technical term is “litotes,” as in “That’s not a bad idea” or “She’s hardly destitute”).

Rarely do double negatives make good copy for T-shirts and streamers, if you want to rally the masses. Well, there was Winston Churchill’s “We shall never surrender” (arguably a double negative) speech on the occasion of the Battle of Britain in June 1940, but that statement was preceded by a string of powerful positives: “We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall never surrender.”

Ninoy Aquino – who must be rolling in his grave at being compared to Digong Duterte – famously said “The Filipino is worth dying for,” a slogan ironically made all the more resonant by the fact that it turned out to be self-fulfilling. I doubt that Duterte will carry his emulation to that extreme, but he or his handlers can learn from its clarity and brevity, which contribute to its emotional appeal. “I am not a Filipino for nothing” means, well, nothing. It says nothing about freedom, justice, peace, love, patriotism, godliness, courage or integrity – none of the grand ideals and ideas that our heroes exemplified. Might it be because these notions were never really associated with a president whom we best remember for his crude expletives and constant exhortations to kill?

“Sampalin ang ICC!” sounds much more honestly him. It still sounds lame, especially given where he is right now, but it seems more purposeful, and should look good on a green T-shirt.

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Email me at jose@dalisay.ph and visit my blog at www.penmanila.ph.