Joker Arroyo Dies, Rodrigo Duterte Looks Presidential As Philippines Sifts Through Political Rubble


The death of Philippine ex-Senator Joker Arroyo who was a figurehead in opposing the martial law decrees of President Ferdinand Marcos in the 1980s, and the ascendance of crime-fighting Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte as a possible presidential contender, heightened Filipino awareness of a tectonic shift in Philippine politics. Human-rights lawyer Arroyo, 88, died of a failed heart surgery at an undisclosed hospital in the United States on Monday, October 5, 2015, and the iconic southern Philippine Mayor Duterte, 70, expressed a possible run for the presidency during a speech in the rebel New People’s Army enclave of Santa Cruz, Davao del Sur, on the same day.

A survivor of detention during martial law, Joker Arroyo went on to serving in the Philippine House of Representatives for more than a decade, after a year’s stint with President Corazon Aquino’s cabinet. According to The New York Times, Joker Arroyo was the chief congressional prosecutor in the December 2000 impeachment trial of President Joseph Estrada for plunder and perjury.

In 2011, Joker Arroyo led a successful effort to impeach Renato Corona, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, providing a showcase victory for the current administration ramping up its anticorruption activity. Ironically, Arroyo was also one of the three senators who at the final count, voted to acquit Corona. The other two senators were Miriam Defensor-Santiago and Ferdinand “Bong-Bong” Marcos Jr.

While left-leaning Joker conducted his one-man crusades against high officials mired in graft and corruption, strong-arm specialist Rodrigo Duterte carried out his own vendetta against gangs and individual perpetrators inside his jurisdiction. Arroyo operated within the northern power bastion of Manila, while Duterte worked in the southern reaches of the Philippines. They were depicted by the press as two lone gunfighters, one making a last stand within a decaying political framework, the other trying to usher in a new dawn on the political landscape.

Amid accusations of supporting the extra-judicial killings of habitual drug users and dealers, Duterte did a balancing act of building a P12-million facility to rehabilitate drug addicts. In terms of combating communist insurgency, Duterte has offered the olive branch to the New People’s Army by visiting N.P.A. camps in remote areas to negotiate peace through proactive diplomacy.

According to the Inquirer, in his Monday address to the Santa Cruz crowd, Duterte asked members of the New People’s Army to raise their hands, and they gamely did. In one of the last bastions of leftist militancy, he urged disaffected fighters to come down from the mountains, to come home and talk. Duterte told them the 46-year-old communist insurgency should end, and this event would be among his priorities as president.

For the year 2015, the Philippine government has been struggling with diverse manifestations of political dysfunction that Joker Arroyo targeted.

On January 25, 2015, a miscommunication between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front resulted in the deaths of 44 Special Action Force policemen trying to capture a Malaysian bomb-maker in a terrorist hideaway. The M.I.L.F. in the middle of peace negotiations with the government, was supposed to allow the police action, but instead let its field operatives along with the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) ambush and massacre the arresting officers.

On March 11, 2015, Makati City Mayor Jejomar Erwin Binay Jr. was suspended by the Ombusman of the Philippines for graft charges. Binay ignored the suspension order and continued to hold office anyway. According to GMA News, two Court of Appeals justices who subsequently halted Mayor Binay’s suspension, were accused of accepting bribes for their decision.

On April 10, 2012, a Philippine inspection vessel was blocked by Chinese maritime surveillance ships protecting Chinese fishermen operating out of the Scarborough Shoal, which is within the Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) as delineated by the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea. Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative reports that China has occupied the shoal up to the present, while the Philippine government has dithered in favor of a protracted “lawfare” with China.

These disturbances indicate a disconnect between the Philippine government and political initiatives waiting to be launched by strong leadership. Joker Arroyo has left the scene. Mayor Duterte is touting a Federalism idea to solve the country’s political woes. Can he match Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew who turned his beleaguered country into an economic dynamo with an unemployment rate lower than that of the United States?

[Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images]

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