PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte made good use of his ability to brand the demons he will exorcise, from drugs to communism to the ABS-CBN Corp. and Maria Ressa. He carved his presidency by constructing and imaging them as bogeys in his political swamp, and crafted his narrative with the mission of draining the swamp of his monsters.

This has been the trademark of his presidency. He made a cottage industry out of Sandra Bullocks movie Our Brand is Crisis and turned it into a political machinery to gain legitimacy and to cement his grip on his loyal political base. He appeared to be in total control. He and his propagandists effectively painted the image of a country in the throes of becoming a narcostate. He unleashed the full force of the state to wage a war on drugs that focused more on the demand side instead of the supply side.

This is actually odd considering that if indeed a narcostate is what we are turning into, then the better strategy would have been to focus on its enablers who are deeply in bed with state agents and not on the petty peddlers and users.

But Duterte was obviously not interested in confronting elite structures of the drug trade. He was after the optics and the drama of a protracted bloody drug war to feed on the fear of his base. After all, images of petty drug criminals being felled in the act of escaping and fighting back, even with handcuffs, would be a better, not to mention easier, fodder for the sustained image of a hero out to clean the streets of grime and filth. It is also a more effective way of striking fear, without risking the wrath of those who can actually retaliate politically.

If one wants to be convinced about the way the President conjures and constructs his enemies, one just needs to look at how he has treated the leftists. It is no secret that he romanced the New Peoples Army (NPA) when he was mayor of Davao. He even raised his fist and was seen onstage with the top echelons of its regional command. He appointed leftists in his Cabinet and in high positions in the government bureaucracy. This was before his romance with them turned sour.

Now, he labels them as terrorists. If one closely analyzes his worldview on terrorism, it is very much slanted toward the leftist rebels and their allies in the political front and in social movements, and not toward agents of terror espousing radicalized political Islam. Contrary to the assurances given by supporters of the Anti-Terrorism Law that political dissent is protected, the Presidents demeanor, in his eagerness to declare the NPA as a terrorist organization, reveals the agenda of branding anti-terrorism as the new face of counter-insurgency. The ease by which cases of sedition were filed against legitimate political dissent drives the fear that even legitimate criticism could lead one to be branded as an enemy of the state.

It is easier for the President to construct a crisis and brand his political enemies because there is a constituency for it. His construction of the image of a creeping narcostate fed on the fears of people about drug-related criminality. His branding of the left and the consequent red-tagging of his critics exploited the fears of people about terrorism. He is now appropriating peoples pent-up anger towards the political and economic elites by imaging his moves against the Lopezes of ABS-CBN as his war against the oligarchs. He capitalized on peoples fears and irrational hatred to prop up his narrative as the slayer of drug criminals, leftist terrorists and corrupt oligarchs.

However, his fight with ABS-CBN, which he does by proxy through his super-majority in the House of Representatives, may reveal the limits of his ability to control the branding of a crisis to his advantage. One can easily stoke peoples fear of drug criminals raping ones daughter, or of NPAs turning our country into a totalitarian regime, or one can feed into their hatred towards the corrupt oligarchs. This is because these are manifestations of the feared or hated other.

However, what happened to ABS-CBN can no longer be easily branded and imaged as Duterte dismantling a hated oligarchic family. People have lost jobs. Many have been denied their comfort and leisure, which ABS-CBN programs have provided them for all these years. Duterte may have made us feel more secure when he went after drug criminals and leftists. But when he went after ABS-CBN, some of us lost our livelihoods, while many have been denied their only free access to sanity and leisure.

But if there is one crisis the President has lost total ability to brand, it is the coronavirus. This invisible enemy has thrown Duterte and his government in total disarray. He resorted to a militarized game plan by appointing retired generals to oversee his war against the virus, thinking that the logic would be the same as fighting petty drug criminals and leftist rebels. Sadly, this led to people being targeted, and even killed, instead of the virus.

Lockdowns were ordered without any consideration of science and common sense. Contact tracing is belatedly intensified and has even entertained the thought of turning ordinary citizens into spies snitching on their neighbors. And who can ignore the idiocy of these unsafe contraptions being required for motorcycle riders that have no consideration for the principles of aerodynamics and of safety?

And cases continue to climb while the economy is on a nosedive. This, as government officials appear confused like when the Health secretary boldly claimed that we have flattened the curve.

If there is one evidence that this virus has eroded the Presidents ability to brand his crisis, it is when his cursing is no longer amusing and people no longer buy his jokes, whether intended or as an excuse.

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A crisis he cannot brand The Manila Times - The Manila Times