[Philippine human rights violation] Duterte Harry fire and fury in the Philippines #7/120
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TWO SMOKING BARRELS
At the vanguard of the People Power Revolution that toppled Ferdinand Marcos was the spiritual leader of Filipino Catholics, the late Archbishop of Manila, wickedly named Cardinal Sin. This was his real name and he revelled in it, reportedly greeting people at his home with ‘Welcome to the house of Sin!’ Most Filipinos are known by their nicknames, and to use someone’s given name usually sounds ludicrously formal. The Philippines does nicknames like nowhere else on earth. Some are contractions or corruptions of their actual names, others refer to what someone looks like, the circumstances of their birth, their foibles, character traits, or their gender, some sound as though they’re onomatopoeic, others are just random.
There’s Bongbong Marcos, the ex-president’s son, a former senator who challenged the result of the 2016 vice-presidential election, where he came a close second. There’s president Duterte’s personal gatekeeper at Malacañang Palace, who’s just Bong, but combined with his surname, he becomes Bong Go. Secretary Bong Go , a selfie-king who has now photobombed just about every occasion in which his political master meets someone famous, from Trump to Xi Jinping. There are BimBims, TingTings, Bing-Bongs, Ding-Dongs, and Pings. And plain Dongs. One of the president’s two younger brothers is Blue Boy, indicating a possible problem at birth.
Girlie is common, as is Boy. Sometimes you bump into Boys in their seventies. There are Inkys and Pinkys and Ballsys and Babes — and don’t think the latter is exclusively female; Babe was probably just the youngest in a big family. In the last administration, there was a male cabinet secretary called Babes Singson, a grandfather. Apple Pie is not that uncommon; there’s Honey Pie, Honey Boy (more unusual, but true), Honeylet (the president’s main girlfriend), Honey Rose (Bongbong’s press secretary), Daffodil, Pepsi, BumBum, and Boo. People are so used to these names that it’s only foreigners who find them amusing. In March 2017, Sara Duterte, Mayor of Davao and the president’s daughter, nicknamed her newborn baby ‘Stonefish’ — apparently because she likes the sea. His real name, Marko Digong, will never get a look-in.
President Rodrigo Roa Duterte is never referred to as ‘Duterte Harry’ or ‘The Punisher’ in everyday speech. He is the original Digong — not to be confused with the curious, rare marine mammal, the dugong, found in the pirate-infested waters off Mindanao. Newspaper headlines announce that Digong’s done this or Digong’s done that … ‘Digong threatens martial law.’ His supporters call him Tatay Digong (Father Digong), which is mischievously twisted to Katay Digong by his opponents. In Tagalog, kataymeans ‘butcher’.
For a while, on Facebook and Twitter, Filipinos toyed with other possible monikers for President Rodrigo ‘Digong’ Duterte, including P-Rod, P-Gong, and P-Diggy. The previous president, Benigno Aquino III, is called Noynoy, but when president was rechristened P-Noy by his supporters, a play on Pinoy, the demonym for all Filipinos. It was a little bit clever; P-Rod just sounded rude. At high school, Duterte was known as Dut, but Duts has now been sequestrated by his opponents, delivered with sardonic chumminess … ‘Did you hear what Duts has gone and said now?’ One sobriquet that did stick was DU30, which his electioneering team came up with. Phonetically, it only really works if you’re from County Kerry, but still, you see it everywhere, from bumper stickers (where it’s accompanied by his tough-guy clenched fist logo) to the embroidered monogram on presidential Polo shirts.
P-Diggy (unfortunately, that one never did catch on) hates being called ‘Sir’. For someone who thrives on adulation, he eschews reverential titles and detests sycophancy. He prefers to be addressed as ‘Mayor’, and, in press conferences, was still insisting on this well into his presidency: the Mayor of Malacañang.
In the flesh, the mayor of the Philippines is diminutive. When he eventually strolls nonchalantly into a news conference, three hours after it was meant to have started, he slouches and looks stooped. His body language is Putin-esque; he appears permanently bored. He adopts, consciously or otherwise, a devil-may-care posture, as though weary at having to do this at all. He is almost always informally dressed, with an open-neck shirt and jeans. A retinue of palace staff and officials tend to occupy the front row to clap, laugh at his jokes, and frown at perceived disrespect from journalists; communications staff fuss around the fringes. Usually (in possible homage to Colonel Gaddafi), a beauty queen who is also a cop, called Sophia Loren Deliu, will be keeping an eye on things, too. Sophia Loren (who entered a beauty pageant as a serving police woman, and won) is one of several female officers in the presidential security detail.