Ruffy Magbanua
“POPULIST politics.” That is how political analysts size up the recently concluded general elections. The landslide victory of Digong Duterte marked the beginning of that new kind of Philippine politics.
The fact that the Filipino electorate rewarded Duterte with an unprecedented number of votes, the political landscape in this politically divided nation may never be the same again.
Duterte’s 15 million votes has been touted as the highest recorded so far in Philippine political history. The reason, analysts say: he was the only presidential candidate who offered simple solutions to fix complex problems.
Reluctant at first to run due to lack of funds, he flirted with the voters of his quick fix campaign agenda, trumpeting to suppress crime, corruption and drugs in three to six months.
This may sound a tall order to some skeptics, but for Duterte, a seasoned politician who ruled Davao for decades, gave the voters that needed high to hang on to his campaign slogan “change is coming.”
And change really came to the fore on election day. At the very start and even up to the last minute of the unofficial and partial counting, he stood firm on his destiny--the presidency.
Duterte’s socialist stance has indeed made wonders, captivating the very heart and soul of the ordinary, the working and middle classes of our society.
Never mind the foul-mouthed tirades and the weird body language this “bisdak” from Mindanao, Duterte has afforded his nemesis the likes of Trillanes a dose of their own medicine.
In fact, Duterte’s obscene language may have only added to his kind of persona--hard-hitting and at times trash-talking to the delight and awe of the greater mass.
His offer of a plug-and-play solution to fix a corrupt government was appealing and magnetic to the many who were on the search for the true meaning of change in governance.
His charisma oozing despite brickbats from his opponents, Duterte had capitalized on voters’ discontent over rising criminality, drugs, poverty, unemployment and the few elite whom they think was untouchable, and favored by the PNoy administration.
The clamor for change was indeed the call of the hour. People want real change and the battle cry “change is coming” has become a household name, and someone like Duterte, the masa believe, could make the impossible become possible.
Duterte’s throng of supporters has chilled his political foes no end, not even the well-oiled machinery of Mar Roxas’s Liberal Party could put a stop to the millions of volunteers--the “Emilio Aguinaldos” who backed him up all the way to victory.
Duterte’s phenomenal win over the well-entrenched opponent Mar Roxas was founded on simplistic campaign--no ifs and buts, only straightforward, candid and often brutal portrayal of national issues at hand.
His legion of supporters took the risk on whether the change they were routing could make a difference or not. What matters most to them was the promise to end corruption in the bureaucracy, the root cause why poverty is prevalent anywhere in the country.
Although the PNoy administration had managed to propel the country’s economic growth by at least six percent, study shows that one in every four barely survives on less than P60 a day budget. Added to this is the alarming rich-poor divide that has worsened to the max in the six-year reign of PNoy.
The presumptive presidential candidate has been accused of demagoguery many times over, but the populist dogma in Duterte has worked well on him, breaking party loyalty to the hilt.
And there’s no doubt about it, the emergence of social media played a unique role in this Duterte-crazy homeland.
And to prove my point, the populist that is Duterte took the social media by storm--without cost--courtesy of the millions of adoring fans who flooded the pages of Facebook, Twitter, blogs and e-mails with campaign sound bites and anecdotes in his favor.
Populist politics as magnified by mainstream and social media may become the norm of the new Philippine politics.
