The Incredible Shrinking Duterte
At What Point Does a Phenomenon Turn Into The Lunatic Fringe?
My two most recent columns look at something not quite publicly discussed but implied by the news: the retreat of Rodrigo Duterte into a kind of Cultic Bunker. For all the easy attribution of fecklessness, lack of concentration, and even will, to Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (or a corresponding attribution of ruthlessness and utter concentration to his wife), he seems so far, to be holding his own against his predecessor.
After my latest column went to press, some additional developments: the House of Representatives took one step closer to canceling the media franchise of Quiboloy'; the Senate issued a show-cause order, demanding that Quiboloy justify to the chamber why he shouldn’t be cited for contempt; the Vice-President stuck her neck out and said Quiboloy was being subjected to a trial by publicity.
Overall, though, the situation seems to me, still the way I outlined it: Duterte is on the retreat, rather more than merely being on the defensive.
The Long View:
I. March 4, 2024
THE LONG VIEW
Double jeopardy
By: Manuel L. Quezon III – @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 04:30 AM March 06, 2024
Last week seems to have been the moment when, after four years of letting things slide, the government decided it could take a political risk by allowing justice to proceed.
The Secretary of Justice last Monday finally announced what everyone had been expecting: the city prosecutor of Davao City’s decision to let Apollo Quiboloy off the hook was overturned. Instead, the prosecutor would have to file charges against the powerful cult leader.
Another case will be filed in Pasig, depriving Quiboloy of a home court advantage. And the Secretary of Justice said that aside from these, two other cases are being investigated by the department. All these cases, the press was told, will be tried in Metro Manila, if the Supreme Court permits.
Quiboloy had a legal double whammy from the time a complaint was filed in Davao—even if dismissed, it was appealed, a ticking time bomb waiting to go off; which is why the Secretary of Justice could make the announcement he did, four years and a change of administrations later—but also when similar complaints prospered in the United States.
There, an indictment was the result, and a warrant issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, also in 2020—but only against three Los Angeles-based administrators of Quiboloy’s US operations.
A 2021 superseding indictment added Quiboloy and five others, and his American assets (and those of 40 other individuals), according to Time, were frozen (the superseding indictment lists the pastor’s American homes as being located in Calabasas, California, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Kapolei, Hawaii). When the Palace stopped being anti-American, speculation became rife that it was only a matter of time before Quiboloy would be handed over to Uncle Sam. Proceedings were scheduled to take place on Mar. 19, but Time reports they have been postponed to Nov. 5, “with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California acknowledging that the case was ‘so unusual and so complex.’”
In retrospect, the mounting alarm of Quiboloy in recent weeks can be attributed precisely to the proceedings looming in mid-March.
At the same time, what became clear were the limits of the solidarity of politicians with Quiboloy, and the limits of the clout of his most powerful friend, former president Rodrigo Duterte. The incumbent President blandly advised Quiboloy to testify before Congress. And both chambers of Congress, in gunning for Quiboloy, have him coming and going: the Senate’s basis are the accusations that have resulted in charges, that of the House, the behavior of his media empire: the Duterte era removed the taboo on using the congressional franchise for broadcast media for political vendetta, which makes Quiboloy’s media fair game.
So Sonshine Media Network International’s (SMNI) ability to defend its principal will be weakened—or put another way, once the legal processes begin to unfold in the courts, the same courts can cite the network or its anchors or talents in contempt if their language becomes too strong. Nor can the network or its talents or anchors hope to thrive in the media landscape once considered to be beyond the reach of government: precisely in the online arena, cyberlibel is already being considered as an offense with which to charge Quiboloy himself.
As it is, Quiboloy, in hiding, has refused to obey subpoenas from the Senate and the House, and while the Senate may feel vindicated by the Department of Justice’s announcement, the House is still threatening the cancelation of the franchise of SMNI if Quiboloy is a no-show for the scheduled Mar. 12 House hearing.
The most Quiboloy could hope for is to drag things out until the midterms, when he could, hopefully, with the help of the former president, expand the composition of the Duterte-Arroyo opposition in the Senate to block the cancelation of his media franchise. But this would be to accomplish a holding operation lasting over a year, which is a long time, politically-speaking.
It kicks the can down the road, so to speak, since the former president has already dropped his opposition to constitutional amendments—even if limited to economic provisions, approval in the midterms removes another taboo, making it possibly that much easier to propose changes to political provisions in 2028.
II. March 13, 2024
THE LONG VIEW
Human shield
By: Manuel L. Quezon III – @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:07 AM March 13, 2024
And so it came to pass that the former president has become a human shield. In doing so he risks being reduced to part of a cult, rather than remaining what he was, a leader with a devoted following that included the cult—among many others backing him.
On Monday, the former president said he volunteered because his friend the besieged pastor “is distracted at the moment.” He will run things for now, he added, though he clarified this means focusing on the pastor’s properties “to see to it that it is preserved well for the congregation … the buildings and the properties which the kingdom owns.” A lawyer seems to think otherwise, that the former president will be expected to do a lot more: “He shall see to it that assets are protected, payables are paid, receivables collected and all financial matters are handled with due diligence with the end in view of benefiting the members of KOJC (Kingdom of Jesus Christ) in the best possible manner.”
The same lawyer told members of the House of Representatives that the fugitive Apollo Quiboloy didn’t actually have anything to do with running his media empire since “the last quarter of 2018.” This was by way of explaining to the House, which is threatening to revoke the franchise of Sonshine Media Network International (SMNI), that he neither owns it nor runs it.
One congressman brushed aside the former president’s becoming a human shield and suggested instead that Quiboloy’s affairs seem to be in disarray: “We could not even clarify when did he leave SMNI, or when did pastor (Marlon) Acobo take over. The records of the Securities and Exchange Commission are also in disarray,” 1-Rider party list Rep. Rodge Gutierrez told reporters.
A rule of thumb is that national media is less relevant to members of the House while it’s essential to the political prospects of members of the Senate. It may explain why the House shows no signs of letting go while the Senate has a small but formidable cluster of senators who have taken Quiboloy’s side, from the President’s own contrarian sister Imee Marcos, to Nacionalista Party (NP) matriarch Cynthia Villar, and Duterte bloc members Bong Go and Robin Padilla. At a time when the media landscape and thus, its reach (and the autonomy or independence of media itself) has drastically shrunk, Quiboloy’s media empire is one of the last ones standing independent of the administration.
Fewer seem convinced that the coalition elected in 2022 will go into the 2025 midterms as anything other than enemies. Though a confrontation was inevitable, it wasn’t until 2028 was near that it had to be so; indeed the Vice President herself is still trying to ensure she remains, officially at least, part of the ruling coalition until then. But even if she does, she risks doing so as a hostage and no longer a partner with independent political means. Her won “aggrupation,” Hugpong ng Pagbabago, remains overshadowed by her father’s affiliations and indeed, in danger of extinction.
Her father’s affiliations are also shrinking, and with it, his independence.
You can track influence by looking at party size. Since March 2023, when I last looked, to today, the relative standing of parties reveals the relative standing of their principals. The two traditional parties, the PDP-Laban (from 39 to five) and Lakas-CMD (from 67 to 92), have shrunk and grown significantly, respectively. For the parties that are essentially commercial enterprises, they have retained their cohesion, rather well: the Nacionalistas went from 36 to 34; the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), from 35 to 33; and the National Unity Party (NUP), from 33 to 36. Even the nominal affiliations of the President and Vice President, respectively, have changed: the Partido Federal ng Pilipinas, from two to 10; and the Hugpong ng Pagbabago, from six to one.
The picture is different in the local arena. PDP-Laban retains 19 governorships and 29 vice governorships and has 269 provincial board members; Lakas-CMD has 10 governorships, 18 provincial board members, but also, 68 city and municipal mayorships and 514 city and municipal councilors; the Partido Federal has 17 governors and three vice governors while Hugpong ng Pagbabago seems to have none at all. The Marcos-Romualdez dual party system thus has the Duterte-Arroyo machine trapped in a kind of political sandwich. I should mention as an aside, that the NP (12 governors, 10 vice governors, 116 provincial board members), NPC (11 governors, six vice governors, 90 provincial board members), and NUP (nine governors, 67 provincial board members, 125 city and municipal mayors, and 990 councilors) to me, are different political animals altogether since they are best understood as corporate subsidiaries.
By turning himself into a human shield for Quiboloy, the former president will find himself volunteering for a fight that narrows his circle, win or lose.
Additional Readings
A series of very interesting views on Joe Biden: For Joe Biden, What Seems Like Age Might Instead Be Style, in the WaPo; Joe Biden’s Last Campaign, in the New Yorker: both look at a man who is the last of his era, while two installments in a three-part series on Biden’s presidential style also makes for riveting reading: That one last phone call Joe Biden always needs to make and The private chats and chance encounters that shape Joe Biden’s thinking.
March 17 marks the 60th death anniversary of President Ramon Magsaysay. A contemporary account is an interview of the lone survivor of the plane crash that claimed the life of the President and his companions: Nestor Mata’s story, April 6, 1957. Nick Joaquin wrote a tremendous feature on the death and funeral of Magsaysay: The death of The Guy, March 18, 1961.
In case you can make it…
The launching of a new edition of Three-Cornered Sun
I was privileged to be invited to write an introduction to Linda Ty-Casper’s novel, The Three-cornered Sun. It’s being launched on Saturday. Here’s an interesting profile of the author by Cecilia Manguerra-Brainard: A Second Life For Linda Ty-Casper’s Novel, ‘Three-Cornered Sun’
Visit the publisher, Exploding Galaxies, site to pre-order the book now!