Words and deeds
At the end of Monday, 26 July 2021, the Filipino nation felt triumphant.
But not for reasons anyone expected.
Days of speculation on what the President would say on his final State of the Nation Address (SoNA) had everyone feeling almost anticlimactic — as if the past five years had been one big bated breath, one that we could finally let out in an exhalation of pure relief.
Was it relief, though, to hear President Rodrigo Duterte talking about his last time to address Congress, recalling 2016, the time he ran for office full of “dreams and determination”?
Many have already given their two cents on how the SoNA went, on what he said and what he did not say, what could have been said better and so on.
But, in speaking his own words, President Duterte revealed some regrets, some recrimination, though of course still with plenty of roar.
A few times he spoke of pain —“masakit sa loob ko,” he said.
“Kaya ‘yan ang masakit sa loob ko (That’s why it pains me).
I did not know that I was fighting my own government. Customs and everyone else were facilitating the importation of drugs. And one importation, as you can see it every night on TV, the police now seize about almost a billion worth of drugs everyday.”
It was unusual, at least for me who had listened to all his past SoNAs, to hear the tough talker speaking with this tone — a bit deflated, a bit careworn. It’s like he had crashlanded into reality.
“When I assumed the presidency five years ago, dominant in my mind were dreams and visions of a better life for all Filipinos. I saw them as reachable through the institution of reforms and radical changes in both the structure of government and the mode of governance... All in consonance with the truth that public office is a public trust,” he said at the start of his long speech.
“I saw them as reachable” strikes me because it once again displays that brash and bold style that have always marked the Duterte governance. In his mind, it could be done — it was possible to change and bring about something that many past presidents had mostly failed at.
But that was before he realized the job was much, much bigger — way bigger than Davao where he had been able to institute discipline and clean not just the streets but the “crime” scene, so to speak.
He knew it would not be easy to “steer the nation toward a comfortable life for every Filipino,” but he realized just how “challenging and humbling” the past five years have been, looking back now.
“When I ran for the presidency,” he went on, “I just made fundamental promises and strangely you can count them by the fingers of your hand. I made those changes, which I thought that was really at that time doable.”
He added later on, “I was driven to hasten the implementation of changes which I believed the country needed, keeping in mind that the Constitution afforded me only six years to make those changes happen. Making a difference within the constitutional time-frame is what I was up against.”
Time was a culprit, and then the Covid-19 pandemic “stalled everything.”
Pandemic or no pandemic, however, nothing could “stall” the dreams and determination of another Mindanaoan, Hidilyn Diaz. Diaz epitomizes what many Filipinos go through in a life that President Duterte pretty much describes in parts of his SoNA. These are Pinoys of true grit and resilience, who make intense sacrifices and work hard through rain and typhoons. They, like Hidilyn, lift weights on a daily basis — which is why the Filipino weightlifter made everything better and brighter that day this week.
Winning the first ever gold medal in the Olympics for the Philippines was like a weight off our country’s history of always being “almost there,” but never quite making it.
And if we are to have more presidents to bring us to that same level of triumph someday, then let’s keep lifting.
“Winning the first ever gold medal in the Olympics for the Philippines was like a weight off our country’s history. “President Duterte revealed some regrets, some recrimination, though of course still with plenty of roar.