By Manny Piñol
Davao City Mayor Rody Duterte, who has consistently rejected the idea of running for President, is willing to face his destiny should the Presidency become a moral obligation for him.
“Pa-reglahan ko na lang kung muabot gyud na nga panahon,” he told me two weeks ago when I asked what he would do when it becomes clear that the people really want him to lead the country.
“Pa-reglahan” is actually a street slang which means taking on a challenge.
Duterte, who came in third to neophyte senator Grace Poe and former front-runner Vice President Jejomar Binay in the recent survey on Presidential preferences, said that when the numbers indicate that there is a unanimous call from the people for him to run for President, he will be compelled to accept the challenge.
Riding on his reputation as a no-nonsense Mayor who transformed Davao City from a killing fields of Communist assassins in the 1980s to one of the safest cities in the world today, Duterte’s ratings have steadily climbed in the last three surveys where his name was included in the list of Presidential prospects for the first time.
He came in with 5% early this year, 12% in the second survey and 15% in the last survey of Pulse Asia, closing in on the free-falling Binay and third to Poe.
But before he would make his final decision to take on the herculean task of leading the nation, Duterte said he will visit the tomb of his departed parents and call on their spirits to guide him.
“There will be no (spiritual) retreat before I make the decision. That’s not me. I will visit the graves of my father and mother and seek their guidance. Maybe, their spirits will whisper to me and tell me which path to take,” he declared during a heart-to-heart talk with some of his closest advisers and friends in Marco Polo Hotel in Davao City two weeks ago.
The mention of the spiritual retreat before making an important decision was obviously a reference to what President Benigno S. Aquino III did before declaring that he would run for President in 2010.
It was I who fielded the hypothetical question after Duterte, as he had categorically stated in the past, said he had no desire to become President.
“But what if the numbers will show that there is a nation-wide call for you to run for President?,” I asked him.
That was when he replied that he would take on the challenge after he had visited the resting places of his father, former Davao Governor Vicente Duterte, and his mother, Soledad Roa Duterte, a retired teacher and social-political activist.
Duterte’s governance ethics were greatly influenced by Governor Duterte who did not even allow his children to ride in his government-issued car while his combative character he inherited from his mother who he not only loved dearly but feared as well.
“My father taught me how a public official should act and behave while my mother made me kneel for hours before the icon of Jesus Christ every time a committed foolishness,” he once told me.
Duterte’s position on the issue of the Presidency has always been consistent with his previous statements and his character as a political leader.
“The Presidency is destiny. If it is yours, it is yours,” he said adding that he will not make extra efforts to beg for support and financial contributions to become President.
“I don’t need it. I don’t covet it but when it becomes a moral obligation, I will have to take the challenge,” he said.
As the deadline for making the final decision in October comes, it is becoming very clear that there is a growing and increasing demand for Duterte’s style of leadership in a country besieged by corruption, crime, a dangerous illicit drugs problem, a 42-year-old Communist insurgency, a restive Muslim population in the south, the menacing presence of China in the West Philippine Sea, the unresolved issue of Sabah, poverty in the countryside, the exploitation of overseas workers, the degradation of the country’s environment, a health system which prejudices the poor and unaffordable to ordinary citizens, a moribund agriculture sector unable to feed the country’s 110-million people and a corrupt judicial and penal system.
Many times, in interviews with national radio networks, I have been asked persistently: “Is Rody Duterte running for President?”
To that question, my stock answer has always been: “Do people need him to be President?”
The burden of making the decision on whether Duterte becomes the next Philippine President or not, rests not on the shoulders of Duterte, but on ours.
Duterte’s position is very clear: He does not dream of the Presidency but if it is his destiny, he will change the country just as he did with Davao City, now a model for upright and principled governance and one of the safest cities in the world.
(Photo caption: Rody Duterte lights a candle in the grave of his father, Governor Vicente Duterte.)
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