Tough but Not Smart?

By Joey Salgado

Vice President Sara Duterte has been in office for two years but she has yet to dazzle us with substance. Not the chemical kind, but the squishy one behind the ears. 

From the comforts of Davao City, where she has retreated since quitting the Cabinet, she has kept an erratic media presence that is brief in the manner of ambush interviews, with no opportunities given or allowed for deeper intellectual probing. 

Her image is heavily curated. Tough, but not tough talking since she rarely talks in public. That’s where those written statements come in. A tough image is the opposite of wonky smart, which implies weak. Tough guys and gals are not weak. Usually not wonky smart either. But who needs smart when one can bully people. Sorry. Command people, I mean.

As education chief she gets a failing mark for hiding her executive ability, a minimum requirement for running a department, let alone a fractious country which is her father’s greatest legacy. And until now she has not shown the mental toughness needed in times of crisis or the maturity to deal with critics and dissenters, to which her response is not one of amity, but scorched earth. 

The persona that she and her communications team want to project is that of Duterte 2.0. A contrary reading, however, is that of a public figure who is divisive, petty, intolerant, and vindictive. That’s still Duterte, but with more hair. 

This, in the Sara multiverse, is how they define “better.”  

“Better” is a positioning statement offering a contrast. But with whom? Obviously with the incumbent President, her former running mate and BFF.  However, contrasts only work if her claim of being “better,” unarticulated but clearly hinted in her statement dated August 9, rests on solid ground, unassailable and spotless. Even a cursory look at her track record as city mayor, vice president, and education secretary would expose the vacuity of the claim. She is staking her political career on a claim that is as solid as quicksand. 

Rappler’s description of her recent “better” manifesto as  a Contra-SONA is on the mark. And as such, her laundry list of supposed administration failings and shortcomings only drew attention to her failings and shortcomings.

Her track record has been peeled, turned over, beaten raw by media, analysts, and political allies of the President. Attempts to push back only open new fronts for attack. 

Better Future? 

By constantly invoking the state of affairs during her father’s term as president, Vice President Duterte is attempting to replicate President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s strategic messaging framework, laid out and implemented, according to reports, after the heartbreaking loss to former Vice President Leni Robredo in 2016. 

It sold the public to a promise of returning the country to the supposed paradise that it was during the reign of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. Glossing over the pillage and terror that defined those years, the Marcos Jr. campaign relied on the distance afforded by time - the Marcoses fled the country in 1986 and majority of today’s voters came of age after the EDSA Revolution - to solidify their case for a Marcos restoration.

The template, however, may not work for the Vice President. 

“Better,” in the Duterte multiverse, is not only Sara Duterte the leader but also her father’s tenure as president. Borrowing from the Marcos template, she talks of those times as some sort of springtime for the Philippines. But her father’s regime ended just two years ago, too proximate and vivid in the minds of the public. 

What memories do they bring up? The drug killings, the iron hand, the cursing, the obeisance to China; POGOS, crime and cronies.

Congressional probes and media reports are unravelling the past regime’s criminal underbelly, in the process exposing former officials and cronies as enablers or conspirators. The unravelling will intensify as we get closer to the midterm elections.

When the Vice President talks of restoration, it’s not about wrapping the nation in the warm embrace of the Dutertes. It’s more like a viselike grip from an iron hand without the velvet glove. Vice President Duterte does not offer a journey to a new and brighter future. She wants to bring us back to dark times. 

That SWS survey 

So is the public buying all this tough talk? According to the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey, the Vice President's satisfaction rating plummeted in June 2024 by a whopping 19 points. The drop was evident in all geographical areas, socio-economic classes and age groups.

No surprise there. The findings simply reiterate a consistent pattern in public sentiment: the public may express dissatisfaction with their president, but they don’t want a vice president who is openly critical of the president. They want their vice presidents to either do their job or avoid being political, or both. 

The Vice President says she only wants to be the voice of voiceless Filipinos. But the people are not totally voiceless. They get to speak out every quarter through surveys such as the ones conducted by SWS. And they have said their piece on the Vice President. 

So is she a better alternative? Nah. And that’s the people talking.

This article also appears in Rappler