[Philippine human rights violation] Duterte Harry fire and fury in the Philippines #1/120
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SON OF A … GOVERNOR
He’s in trouble. Again. Sometimes, when this happens, he goes on the run for three days in the hope that by the time he gets home it will have blown over. But he knows this time it won’t end well; he’s brought dishonour to the family name and he’s going to be crucified. You can’t fire a stone at a priest from your catapult as he’s mowing the lawn at your school, spray ink from a water pistol on the back of another priest’s cassock, then play truant for two months, and not bargain on suffering for your sins. He will have to face his beloved mother, The Punisher. She makes no secret of the fact that he is her favourite. Often he can sweet-talk her. Not this time. His normally soft-spoken father is furious. It’s he who lays down the law, but it’s his mother who is the enforcer. He doesn’t feel remorse for what he’s done, but it hurts him that he’s hurt her, and, being stoic and honourable, he’ll take the rap.
Horsewhip or crucifixion. It’s not his choice. He hates the crucifix, but his mother is pious and devout, and when it’s felt he needs to really contemplate his transgressions, this is her way.
‘In the name of the Father …’
Upstairs, in the spare room, in front of the altar; Jesus, the son of God, in agony, hangs there from the cross, suffering for the sins of this teenaged priest-tormentor. It’s in his face. He is kneeling on mung beans, scattered on the hard wooden floor of the guest bedroom. Christ. His mother has ordered him to kneel with his arms outstretched, mirroring Jesus.
And that’s pretty much exactly as he told it to his best friend, Jesus. Duterte’s oldest friend, Jesus ‘Jess’ Dureza, his mucker-in-chief at Holy Cross High School in Digos City, Davao; Jesus, the journalist-turned-lawyer-turned-peace-negotiator, turned cabinet minister in the Duterte government. Jesus was waxing lyrical to me in his ministerial chambers in Manila.
‘I’ll tell you another story,’ he chortled.
He was in full flow, and his young communications secretary, Basha, was smirking as she recorded and noted the drift of conversation.
‘We would stay in the dormitory of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, so we had to pray. He would say the rosary. One time he said: “Oh, you’re always praying, Jess.” At that time I was planning to become a Brother, too. Planning. He would playfully say: “You’re always bonding with Jesus.” He said “I had my bonding with Jesus. It took a long time. When Mother punished me, I was able to bond with Jesus Christ.”’ She was an amiable, sweet person, his mother, but very, very strict, his old friend said. And he was an enfant terrible. This particular form of bondage scarred Duterte — for life. Now in his seventies, he still talks about it.
If the mixed signals of this act of penitence were hard for the diminutive, 14-year-old Duterte to comprehend, so too are those he sends today as president. In his head, Duterte has always been on the side of the angels. He has always placed himself at the heart of the salvation story he invented as the narrative for his life. As law student, state prosecutor, mayor, and, now, as president, he has raged against injustice and stood up to the bullies, on the side of the oppressed and the weak. But for all the noble convictions and the compassion those who love him say that he embodies, it is not what his victims, enemies, and detractors see. They see a cold-hearted tyrant, armed with an Uzi.
In 2016, Duterte said he ‘hadn’t entirely abandoned his faith’. A small wooden crucifix still hangs on the wall of the bedroom of the simple house he shares with Honeylet Avanceña, chief among his mistresses, the ‘First Girlfriend’ in Davao. But he chose an audience of local industrialists to confide that he couldn’t perform his duties and be a devout Catholic at the same time. Perhaps he detected a possible conflict of interest with the Duterte Harry style of governance. Having attended two Catholic high schools, been whipped by the deans of discipline, and lashed and crucified by his mother at home, Duterte today has little time for fornicating priests, hypocritical bishops, or the Church in general — or, for that matter, the Pope.