No rest for the wicked:
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte
The harshest critics of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte have in recent days exhibited again the abject darkness of their character. Speculation on the health of the president following his conspicuous absence from this year’s Independence Day ceremony at the Rizal Park on the 12th June reached fever pitch as Netizens from the usual camps fielded scornful quips over social media; many wondering out loud about the whereabouts of “President No-Show”.
Despite assurance coming from Malacanang that the president is just “resting” as well as suggestions coming from the likes of Senator JV Ejercito to focus on more important things considering the seriousness of events currently transpiring, anti-Duterte social media “influencers” remained on a vitriolic rampage over that period. Most disturbing of all are the most influential of the lot wishing Duterte was dead.
| SUPPORT INDEPENDENT SOCIAL COMMENTARY! Subscribe to our Substack community GRP Insider to receive by email our in-depth free weekly newsletter. Opt into a paid subscription and you'll get premium insider briefs and insights from us. Subscribe to our Substack newsletter, GRP Insider! Learn more |
One of them, a certain Jonas Bagas who has almost 5,000 followers on Twitter actually took the time to articulate in detail the nuances of such a wish on a Facebook post…
I am torn about Duterte’s condition. To wish for his death is undeniably the most human reaction to the monstrosity that we’re facing. If his mortality means an end to the killings, the fakery, the gross abuses, then so be it; it will be a relief, especially to those powerless against his machinery of violence, of dehumanizing fakery. If Duterte is sick, and it appears his condition is worsening, then I am also one of those who wish that his sickness will put an end to our suffering.
But I also agree with those who want Duterte to be alive so he can face justice, those who believe that he should be denied the grace that mortality gives to all, good or evil. The court of humanity first before facing death. There should be reckoning about his crimes, he and his cohorts should live the rest of his life behind bars, and his crime should be told, again and again, not to cause pain to him and his loved ones, but to remind him and supporters of his regime the truth that no fakery or lies can erase: that Duterte and his cohorts killed thousands without just cause, and what they did is not just a crime against Filipinos but a crime against humanity.
I want this reckoning to happen to deny his industrial complex of online trolls the myth that they can use to immortalize their own fakery. I want this reckoning to happen in an impartial court to show his online trolls that they have been insulting our conscience by reducing this issue as a case of dilawan envy; that a lie repeated by a thousand shares is still a lie. Dead or alive, I want Duterte and his cohorts to face reckoning and justice until the truth becomes the ember that comforts those who suffered, until truth becomes a burning coal inside the throats of Duterte’s grand liars.
Interesting, but hardly surprising, is how Bagas uses a single flawed argument as the pillar of this tirade — the notion that Duterte had personally perpetrated the “killing” of thousands of innocent Filipinos. This he spells out verbatim in his assertion “that Duterte and his cohorts killed thousands without just cause”. What seems to altogether escape Bagas’s and other anti-Duterte activists’ sloppy thinking is the reality that the causal chains that link street deaths in the raging “war on drugs” along the commands and decisions that led to them is long and full of many variables. A hasty conclusion that Duterte and his so-called “cohorts” perpetrated these killings in a premeditated way and with malice cannot even be regarded as an error in judgment. It is a downright irresponsible act of spinning absolute fiction into seditious propaganda.
Bagas’s justification for his wish that Duterte be dead pretty much encapsulates the general position of Duterte’s critics — and the dangerously convoluted thinking around which they build their virulent ideology. It is a soul-crushing ideology that seeks to block a march towards reform — reform that could ultimately dismantle the hold of an entrenched oligarchy on an entire national economy.
According to Duterte’s critics, the president is the singular cause of Filipinos’ “suffering today”. “If Duterte is sick, and it appears his condition is worsening, then I am also one of those who wish that his sickness will put an end to our suffering,” Bagas writes. This is the same kind of thinking that propped up the moral ascendancy of the Aquino-Cojuangco “Yellow” brand that ruled Filipinos’ minds for 30 years — the idea that Filipinos’ suffering was caused by a single “evil”, that of former President Marcos’s Martial Law “regime”.
30 years worth of history that serves as proof that this was a false concept — that Martial Law was not the singular cause of Filipinos’ suffering and impoverishment — did nothing to change the nature of the tired rhetoric used by the Yellow camp to demonise people who they perceive threatens their sacred — and profitable — status quo. To this day, they raise monumental stinks about the “evils” of Martial Law and how its most recent incarnation in Mindanao, raised by Duterte to facilitate the eradication of a terrorist malaise threatening to engulf the region, spells doom for a nation of “freedom-loving” people.
Filipinos on the Yellow Camp seem to suffer from thinking that is laced with too much Catholic upbringing. All good necessarily emanate from God or the godly and all evil necessarily emanate from some kind of Satan figure or from various devilish incarnations. This kind of thinking is clearly evident in their politics; their prayerful goodness still embodied by the Aquinos. What they are trying to do today is reconstruct the new bad guy in their political narrative now that the Marcoses have all but vindicated themselves before a public weary of the Yellow rhetoric. The effort is coming across as desperate and futile. As evident in the convoluted logic people like Jonas Bagas use to formulate a much-needed Opposition ideology, nobody seems to be intellectually up to the task.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
As long as the international community believe that it is the pro-Cory group who were responsible of the removal of Marcos, we will never have peace in our country.
cant wait for these guys to experience shariah law. martial law aint got shit on it!
I don’t wish anyone’s death over the system we allow to run our country (claimed to be democracy, but clearly not). That would be as backward and pointless as our politics and politicians. However, maybe I’m fading into senility as I grow old, but I really don’t remember it being made clear that my vote for Duterte meant voting for thousands of unnecessary deaths, the ever present threat of martial law and our country being ridiculed the World over. As idealistic as it might seem, but still truthfully, I voted as always for the chance of a better future for those who share my bloodline and all future generations. I guess silly me for wanting what others have had for decades and we, it seems, are perpetually to be denied by those few who think it’s their right to take it all away from us. The same few who instruct us it’s Filipino culture to enjoy a simple life , but then steal, lie and cheat to ensure their spoiled fat kids don’t ‘enjoy’ it themselves! How nice it would be to stop wasting time and effort on the ceaseless, useless, pointless bickering over our past failures and set out a clear manifesto for a progressive future. One without public servants who think their families are our feudal overlords, where corruption is a real crime and punished absolutely, and where the once stolen public money is used to fuel a future with a better infrastructure, decent education and healthcare (sadly our average life expectancy is only around 66 because only ‘certain people’ can afford healthcare!). So yet another death isn’t necessary of course, strange to even have to say that, but just to stop going backwards and then the chance of a little positive progression would be nice. That’s certainly not what’s happening now, far from it, and hasn’t happened for a long time – whoever we all decide we want to endlessly blame. But this would take consigning the past to history, positive planning, effort and bravery – none of which seems too abundant right now…
Jonas Bagas, a YellowTard spokesman, is just “howling at the moon”…To wish someone’s death because you disagree with his politics, is nonsense.
Who brought the Shabu problem in the Philippines ? It is the Aquino Cojuangco regime. They may had hidden business transactions with the Chinese Triad Mafia, regarding this Shabu Drug Trade…. Since, high government officials, like Leila de Lima was very much involved in the Shabu Drug Trade. Mar Roxas may had been involved also, because the Drug Trade, even expanded to the Barangay Level.
Countries with drug problems will always have murders and killings. Mexico and Columbia are examples. The drug business is a multi billion U.S. dollar business. As all illegitimate business; you will find bad people in it. These people will not hesitate to kill or murder, to promote and protect their drug turf/business.
To blame the killings and murders to one person, is not only being misinformed, but is nonsense.
Even, if Pres. Duterte is gone. If the drug trade continues…there will be murders and killings…
jj, go over all that you’ve written and think again. president duterte has always been candid and spontaneous. always. and while no one is really comfortable with death, it is a reality to face. true, there is unnecessary death, however, that’s the way it is!
Utter nonsense, and that’s why we’re a poor excuse of a nation. So sad…
president duterte should declare martial law for the whole philippines. the yellow dynasty is already committing sedition. they will never stop their fight for possession of luisita. it’s worth dying for, and they already died for it. secondly, the siege of marawi has something to do with the failure of the BBL. and now take it by force. they’re using the muslim seccessionist as their armed group like what they did to the NPA’s against marcos just to keep luisita. people power behind president duterte is the only solution to this to end the yellow dynasty. arrest them all ‘cuz they’re committing sedition already. they’re endangering the lives of the pilipinos by their actions.
@ NO NAME:
Wishing other people’s death is evil, just because of political differences. Drug Trade problems in any country are notorious for murders and killings.
I don’t believe that one person alone is responsible for drug trade murders and killings. Drug Lords will always be competitive of their businesses. . . these competition leads to murders and killings.
The Aquino Cojuangco regime with their collusion of the Chinese Triad Mafia, brought this Shabu Drug Trade/Manufacture to the Philippines. Leila de Lima, the notorious drug dealer/nymphomaniac; and her willing business partner, Mar Roxas, expanded the Shabu Drug business, for their own profits.
Aquino just looked the other way, or he may had been secretly involved in the Shabu Drug Trade, himself…
I do agree with you @salagintong bukid, if all us can put words into action by supporting Duterte in a nationwide people power against the YellowTards then they’ll know that we had had enough of their viciousness. Blaming him for killings due to drug trade is insane. And the siege in Marawi is such an obvious maneuver. I think the Maute group has received financial support and ammunition from these Yellowtards. Aguirre should have kept his mouth shut and made a thorough (but discreet) investigation about Trillanes et al then we’ll have proof about their sedition. The real threat of terrorism is coming from the Yellowtards, their endless quest for power, and their desire to place Leni Lugaw in the presidential position. It’s obvious why they keep on insisting that he’s sick (or in the brink of death) so they’ll have a reason to place her there. Every week there’s a new plot coming from this group. I’ve had enough of them. Let’s put an end to their tyranny.
jonas bagas will die soon
The destabilization moves against DU30 will only stop if DU30 initiate a referendum for the Filipino People to return to the 1973 Constitution with the rider of the reimposition of death penalty on heinous crimes which must include treason, plunder, illegal drug trade among others !
This is kinda reminds me what Kathy Griffin had done to US President Donald Trump by displaying a bloody beheaded Trump & posted it to her social media account. This is what you call a character assassination. Jonas Bagas is no exception & he might imitate what Ms. Griffin did to Mr. Trump soon by displaying a bloody beheaded Pres. Duterte just like the story of Medusa & he’ll post it on his social media account & he’ll doesn’t care if many pro-Duterte people will bash to him ‘cuz it’s his free speech & expression. Yeah right.
Failipinos in the Failippines, including a person that goes by the name “Jonas Bagas” (photo), deceive themselves if they believe they can hold on to old models as ideologies whimper off to a shallow grave in prolonged agony of people, institutions and cultures.
@nyek nyek .. (The destabilization moves against DU30 will only stop if DU30 initiate a referendum for the Filipino People to return to the 1973 Constitution with the rider of the reimposition of death penalty on heinous crimes which must include treason, plunder, illegal drug trade among others !)
that will still be opposed by the yellow dynasty. people power is second to none, it’s the only way out off this yellow dynasty’s 87 constitution. it is the enemy of the state.
these yellowtards politicians are all dumb shits. there are 3 situations to declare martial law. 1. invasion, 2. rebellion, and 3. if the life of the pilipinos is in danger which falls under terrorism.
Maybe online ‘tards believe they’re acting like “cool thugs” by saying or implying that they hate somebody. Well, they’re not cool, and they’re still thugs.