Ruffy Magbanua
AFTER over a month of discharging his duties, President Rody Duterte admits the presidency is a lonely job, and definitely not a walk in the park.
The President revealed this after swearing in local officials in Malacanang, saying he has to work hard until midnight, and even beyond the wee hours of the night, sleep for a few hours, then wake up to get back to work again the next morning.
His work schedules have become routine–work, sleep, wake up and work again, then sleep, wake up and work again, a never ending saga of his newfound political career who at 71, is one of the oldest Presidents this country ever had.
He then complained of his salary that he is getting–a measly P130,000 a month for the highest position of the land where the buck of mega problems of the nation gets to a screeching stop. What keeps him going, he says, is his love of country.
Talking in jest, Duterte prefers to work as mayor of Davao City where he finds it fulfilling albeit rewarding, rather than staying by his lonesome at Bahay Pagbabago, the President’s official residence from Monday to Friday. His weekend is reserved for family bonding in Davao.
For the first time after occupying Malacanang, the President faced off the members of Malacanang Press Corps, issued statements on ending the labor contractualization, Con-ass, the unilateral ceasefire that conked out and his scheduled meeting with Nur Misuari in the coming days.
During his visit with the troops in Kapalong, Davao del Norte, he chided the CPP/NPA for not honoring his call for a suspension of hostilities.
Two days after he announced a unilateral ceasefire, communist rebels ambushed a team of militiamen in Kapalong District, Davao del Norte that killed one militiaman and four others wounded.
The visibly outraged President Rody passed on this question to his former mentor, CPP Founding Chair Jose Maria Sison: “Äre we or are we not?”
The President waited last minute for Sison’s reply why the ambush was carried out, but Malacanang got no word, hence the lifting of the truce. What now? Well, the road to peace is indeed rocky.
Nevertheless, despite the communists’ failure to reciprocate his call for a unilateral ceasefire, Duterte has to play the balancing act being the father of this conflict-doused nation.
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No matter what would be the outcome of his unifying effort, the President has to extend a conjuring hand to all social and political enemies of the State. There is no turning back this time.
But under his turf, will the forthcoming peace talks in Oslo yield common ground to lasting peace?
Like all other peace talks that took place in the past, both parties used again and again the word “collapse” as an excuse to failed negotiations at the people’s expense.
In fact and in truth, we the Filipino people have become immune to this half-a century internal conflict that already claimed thousands of lives and equal number of properties destroyed, ruined, razed to the ground or wrecked down to the last pole standing.
The government has already wasted a lot of people’s money that ran into millions now presumptuously to reach out for that elusive peace hiding behind the skirts of Joma Sison and Co. in The Netherlands.
Peace for now is nowhere in sight.
Like the President’s dilemma on how to balance his political lifestyle, attaining lasting peace is not a walk in the park either.
E-mail: ruffy44_ph2000@yahoo.com
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