CHAFF FROM THE GRAIN
Hector RR Villanueva
“No personal consideration should stand in the way of performing a public duty.” – Ulysses S. Grant
After four years, an approval rating of 91 percent is unbelievable but statistically plausible if you happen to be President Digong Duterte.
He is lionized and popular with the masses and the nation as a whole.
He is austere and generous with public monies for the poor and men in uniform.
He is astute, abhors corruption and disdains wealth which gives President Rodrigo Roa Duterte the moral fortitude and political will.
On the other hand, he has yet to revitalize the economy and he faces rising unemployment, swarming OFW returnees, burgeoning population growth, school dropouts, mounting hunger, a drug menace, communist insurgency, endemic corruption and an oligarchic political system wanting for reforms and transformation.
Nonetheless, despite of the challenges and problems President Rodrigo Roa Duterte is a good father of the nation.
However, he lacks the resources, the profundity, the time, energy, and health to catapult the nation to a higher level of sustainable growth.
Thus, the country needs a leader similarly patriotic, dedicated, forthright, and highly motivated.
In the meantime, there are mundane problems and issues to be resolved with decisiveness and alacrity like the squabble for speakership of the House of Representatives which has taken the nature of tragedy and political farce.
President Rodrigo Roa Duterte, fortified with authoritarian tendencies, tends to initiate a controversy and then allows the issue to fester and meander.
He then loses temporary interest, only to be asked later to mediate and resolve the contrary at the expense of harmony and unity.
The House leadership and membership are within the realm of influence of a sitting president.
Similarly, the unfinished business of congressional reforms and constitutional revision remain the major agenda of the next president.
Last but not the least, the government’s IATF, concerned agencies and response to COVID-19 pandemic could do with more enhancement, expertise, and imagination.
The protocols are too harsh, selective, and anti-poor with the facile and simplistic solution of immediate lockdowns and community quarantine, heavy fines and confinement of violators into highly congested city jails.
The LGUs are not knowledgeable with the urgency and need for economic recovery.
At the end of the day. President Rodrigo Roa Duterte can urge frontline agencies to labor discreetly and avoid excessive hyping and publicity that will unduly alarm the public already traumatized by covid19.
However, you cannot argue against success and the people trust President Rodrigo Roa Duterte.
You be the judge.