The good, bad and ugly in Duterte’s state of nation address

It wasn’t merely the use of expletives like “whore” (putang), it was calling opponents “sons of bitches” and – something that shocked some observers even more than Duterte’s casual acknowledgement he had once killed a man – using masturbation to describe someone’s policy position. (Duterte jokingly asked the interpreters not to translate the Borneo slang term he had used.)
Among our political rites, the annual national address is of paramount importance. The president is required by the constitution to “address the Congress at the opening of its regular session” on the “fourth Monday of July”.
This tradition, which usually draws members of the Supreme Court and the diplomatic corps, offers a perspective on the legislative agenda of the administration as well as an assessment of the state of the nation that drives the agenda.
There was very little of that this year. Judging from Duterte’s own emphasis during the official address and repeated in an unusual same-day news conference, the biggest policy proposal was in fact a change in policy: An end to the peace negotiations with communist insurgents. He cited one reason in particular: How can he negotiate peace with the rebels, he asked, when the New People’s Army deliberately ambushed the Presidential Security Group, the elite military unit that protects Duterte himself?
On his way to making this legitimate point, Duterte touched on many topics, not all of them related to his legislative agenda. To get a better sense of the speech as a whole, here are two issues he brought up, to contrasting effect.
First he addressed the so-called war on drugs, calling on the critics to “use the influence, moral authority and ascendancy of your organisations over your respective sectors to educate the people on the evils of illegal drugs instead of condemning the authorities and unjustly blaming [them] for every killing that bloodies this country”.
But off-script, he condemned the Commission on Human Rights and threatened to abolish this constitutionally mandated agency.
This is still a president who does not welcome criticism, especially on human rights grounds. He did say, in his speech: “But don’t get me wrong. I value human life the way I value mine.”
But later, in one of the many ad-libbed portions of the address, he expressed his preference to be shot in the back rather than “go beyond my term”.
These contradictions raise questions about the value of the Duterte’s own reference point.
But easily among the highlights of his speech was his low-key, moving appeal to Supreme Court Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno to lift the temporary restraining order “that prevents the Department of Health from distributing subdermal [contraceptive] implants, which will cause the wastage of 350 million pesos worth of taxpayer money. I also note that since its issuance two years ago, this TRO has impaired the government’s ability to fully implement responsible family planning and methods and the [Reproductive Health] Law.”
The reason this was effective was the change of register to a more respectful but still powerfully argued line: “I will not attribute anything, ma’am, [to the] Supreme Court. Maybe I am at fault, so I am sorry, if I misquote or I did not have the complete facts. But [this] Congress passed the Reproduction Law. It was already a law [that should be implemented], because we are really going into family planning. I am not for abortion. I am not for birth control. But certainly, I am for the giving of the freedom to a Filipino family [to choose] the size [of their family].”
The president was not a petitioner arguing before the Supreme Court, but rather an advocate in the court of public opinion.