“Ikaw ang pangulo para sa pagbabago… Sawa na ang bayan ko sa magnanakaw na tao.”
(You are the president for change... My country is tired of people who steal.)
These are the first lines of folk musician Freddie Aguilar’s song for President-elect Rodrigo Duterte. It plays inside Duterte’s pick-up truck one night in Davao City after one of his post-elections late-night press conferences.
The campaign season, the time when this song could be heard everywhere, is over. Duterte has won the presidential elections by a landslide with 16.6 million votes, the first such victory for a Mindanaoan.
But Duterte can’t seem to let this song go. A few days later, he plays it again in the middle of another press briefing. He asks for silence. What are his marching orders for his Cabinet? Just listen to this song, he says.
As it plays, Duterte, alone in the table in front, rests his head upon his hands.
To hear this song is to be transported back to his Miting de Avance in Luneta on May 7.
That night, some 600,000 people filled the park. A giant flag was passed around as Duterte clutched a smaller flag to his chest and, with tears in his eyes, declared, “It will be only one Filipino nation.”
To hear this song is to be reminded that Duterte has become a symbol.
To his supporters, he is the catalyst for change. He is the anger vote against the supposedly blundering Aquino administration. He holds the torch for Mindanao and Visayas against “imperial Manila.” He is the strong leader with a soft heart. He is the ordinary man against the oligarchs, the crime-fighter, the benevolent dictator, the savior.
The adoration of his supporters is matched only by the revulsion of his critics. To them, he is a threat to democracy, a sexist punk, a man for whom nothing is holy. He is the cold-blooded murderer whose respect for human rights is a self-admitted cop-out. He is a symbol, not so much of hope, as of despair, the vote of people so jaded they can no longer tell good change from bad.
Duterte is about to take on an even more symbolic role. On June 30, his oath-taking as the 16th president of the Philippines will make him the father of the country, the first Mindanaoan president, the man at the helm of a nation leaving behind "Daang Matuwid" territory.
But symbols don’t lead countries. Fallible men do. Duterte is every inch as flawed as the next man, as he so often reminds us.
So who is this man they call Rody Duterte?
The Bisaya
A map of how all regions in the country voted last May 9 shows Duterte won in most of Mindanao and in major regions in the Visayas like Cebu (53% of all votes) and Bohol (49.5%).
Anyone who followed him around as he campaigned in these regions won’t be surprised by this turn-out.
Duterte bewitched these regions with his naughty humor, infectious anger, irresistible promise of “true” change, and most importantly, the durable roots that tie him to their people.
Duterte branded himself as the Bisaya and the Mindanaoan rolled into one and he could do this credibly because of his parents.
His father Vicente comes from Danao, Cebu, and his mother Soledad is a Maranao born in Agusan del Norte.
Representative of millions of Filipinos, the Duterte family were migrants. Vicente moved his family from Cebu to Southern Leyte before finally settling in Davao.
Rody himself was born in Maasin, Southern Leyte and stayed there until he was around 6 years old. He still recalls the smell of copra roasting in the sun as he and his friends passed by fields aboard open-air trucks.
Aside from bequeathing Rody with multi-rootedness, his parents gave him his first experience of politics and public service.
When the Cebuano Vicente decided to run for governor of the undivided Davao, he gave his 18-year-old son Rody the task of accompanying him during his campaign sorties all over the province.
Rody took his first step in the campaign trail, going from barangay to barangay talking to people from all walks of life.
“He was talking to the barangays already at the time. It was his job to deliver whatever it is, or anything that has to do with the elections,” said Jocellyn Duterte, Rody’s youngest sister who was another of their father’s campaign companions.
Rappler.com
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