PRESIDENT-ELECT Rodrigo R. Duterte is assuming office amid high expectations from his many supporters, with the detractors continuing to doubt that he will deliver. He would, therefore, be well advised to start with drastic doable announcements, with the purpose of getting national support for his administration. To begin with, he must now look and sound presidential. I suggest three priorities basically.
1Get both sides in the New People’s Army (NPA) conflict to declare a nationwide cease-fire immediately. Get the contentious issues be threshed out by the two sides in the time before June 30, so that the formal negotiations—when they do take place—will be smooth and quick. Let there be no hesitation to release the political prisoners. If the President can announce the end of the NPA and communist problem, he will have delivered on his promise to bring peace to this country. It has been 47 years of killings, with the economy dragged down as a result. It helps that Duterte is a socialist and is, in fact, a student of Jose Ma. Sison. On the part of Sison, he knows that Marxism is passé and he probably longs to come home provided there is an honorable end to his crusade. Four slots in the Cabinet for his people would be an honorable end. He can come home without being arrested. At his age, this is acceptable.
2Get tough on the drug problem and be serious about stopping the collusion between Philippine National Police scalawags and the drug lords. Jail them. Make a spectacle of raids on drug dens nationwide. Let us show early on the effectiveness of the campaign. The police know who the drug dealers are. Jail them while Congress is working on a bill to increase the penalties for drug trafficking. Let us monitor drug addiction.
3On the economy, let the economic team, the National Economic and Development Authority specifically, quickly decide to shift gears to clearly target the well-being of every Filipino as the measure of progress. Let high GDP growth remain a target, but stop depending on the “trickle-down effect,” which Pope Francis describes as a capitalist expectation that does not work. Only the rich gets richer. This must be stopped. The government has to move all agencies to go and find out what the poor needs to improve their conditions and develop a program to
address these. The scandalous 25-percent poverty level, the highest in Asean, must be brought down. Let this administration be seen as giving the poor a break.