Part of Duterte’s success is the fact that he says the right things, at the right time, specifically for his audience. This audience, of course, might not necessarily be us, who stand strongly against human rights violations, or repression, or state violence, or misogyny. But we barely matter. His audience is his base of supporters, who have been listening to him, who wait for him to speak, who hear him through his propagandists from Bong Go to Mocha Uson. These mouthpieces will deny they speak for him, but it won’t matter: they deliver the same rhetoric, in the same tenor, with basically the same content. It is all the absentee-President needs to stay afloat.
It of course also helps him that a bunch of us might agree, to some extent, with some of his soundbites, especially when it comes to the oligarchs. After all, anyone who has kept abreast not just of local but of global discussions on poverty and environmental degradation and abuse, would know that a chunk of the blame falls on the irresponsible, greedy rich. And the Philippines has its share of that that kind of wealthy.
Certainly, we can agree that having oligarchs treat basic public services like water and electricity as businesses that must turn in hefty profits, is a crisis in itself. In the same way that we can agree that there is something wrong with these big media empires refusing to regularize its employees in the name of their profit margins.
Yet, every time I find myself agreeing with Duterte on anything, I take stock. After all, it seems that his “eat-the-rich” soundbites are nothing but that. On the one hand, to feed his supporters what they need to hear to continue believing that he’s the man they voted into power; on the other, to make sure that the rich … well, that they are on his side.
And in the beginning, he most certainly did. In 2017, the Ayalas were winning bids for big-ticket government infrastructure projects. In 2018, when government released a list of companies who lived off contractualization of workers and the ENDO (end-of-contract) system, and it excluded major oligarch businesses (Henry Sy’s SM, Ramon Ang’s San Miguel Corporation) who were known supporters of Duterte, no matter how notorious for contractual hiring.
Who topped that list? Jollibee, DOLE, and PLDT—this should’ve been an early indication that Manny Pangilinan was not a rich person that Duterte favored.
An even earlier indication that Duterte’s really just out to get certain oligarchs, and not all of them? In 2016, Duterte tagged Roberto Ongpin as symbol of the oligarch he wanted to slay. Ongpin headed Phil Web Corp, so Duterte levelled up his attack by saying he wanted to end online gambling. Soon after, Ongpin was banned by the SEC from participating in any public or publicly-listed company; by October 2016, Ongpin had sold his shares of Philweb at a 58% discount.
Now that seems like a massive success, until you realize WHO has since headed Philweb: Greggy Araneta, husband of Irene Marcos. And has Duterte even so much as followed up on that stance versus online gambling? Of course not.
This would not be the last time this would happen for Duterte oligarchs. The Prieto-Rufinos let go of the Mile Long Property they had run for four decades, and sold their shares to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, as soon as Duterte started attacking them in 2017 for their reporting on the drug war.
Who was the lucky person to gain from this Presidential attack on the Prietos? Ramon Ang, who Duterte himself admits donated to his presidential campaign, and who he has declared as his “friend.” Never mind that he is in fact, oligarch, too.
Since then, the list of Duterte oligarchs, the wealthy and rich that he surrounds himself with, has become clearer. There are the Razons, who Duterte has promised will get Wawa Dam, never mind the environmental repercussions and the displacement of indigenous peoples; who gets to build a casino despite Duterte’s no-casino declarations; and who has since acquired a 25% stake in Manila Water of the Ayalas—Duterte’s most favorite enemy the past six months.
And there is no talking about Duterte cronies without mentioning Dennis Uy, a campaign donor who has probably benefitted the most from this government. His meteoric rise is well-documented, but what we might have missed is that in mid-February 2020, Uy had the gall to ask the government to guarantee his P700-million loan. Which means that if his company fails to pay it, we will have to do so.
And of course there are the Villars: the Senator who was campaign donor, the son who is DPWH Secretary, the daughter-in-law who is Justice Undersecretary, and the patriarch whose advise Duterte seeks and who he has endorsed for President in 2022. Never mind that as Duterte hits Pangilinan ang the Ayalas on the water crises, it is the Villars who have the most to gain: they own PrimeWater, which Duterte has praised of late.
This is the thing we must realize about Duterte: even when he seems to be on the same page as the rest of us about the greed of big business and the ways in which they are able to circumvent the law in the name of profit, he is in fact on a different book altogether. He is not here to actually end oligarchic abuse. He is here to deliver the soundbites that will sow fear in these oligarchies. He is saying these things so he might bring them to their knees. He is declaring them as enemies so that his own oligarchs and cronies can get a piece of that pie.
This powerplay reveals that in fact Duterte cares least about those at the bottom of that pyramid, as he cares most about staying in power. And he sees these rich who are not on his side as risky propositions: after all, they could just as well start supporting resistance movements against government; they could just as well start finding ways to raise consciousness towards 2022.
They could also just give in to Duterte. Out of fear, out of shame. After all, this remains true: never before have the rich been called out in this manner by a President. But this is the thing with call-out culture: the bullies are clear, and the ones being accused—no matter how guilty—can but transform into victims. In the case of a president throwing his weight around, shooting-from-the-hip, slurred speech and all, this is even truer.
And as we watch this unfold, one does wonder not so much how many more oligarchs will fold, but which ones will rise up and start doing right by us, beyond their profit margins. Hope springs eternal. ***