On his fourth year and 5th SONA: Duterte is the biggest pasaway

A change in change narrative is underway. Duterte’s 5th SONA after four years in office, as expected, will never be a list of new pledges as promises made in 2016 is a grand fail. Instead, a narrative of ‘pasaway na Pinoy’, ‘pasaway na bisaya’, or ‘pasaway na terorista, unyonista, aktibista at human rights’ will be peddled for public consumption, in a blame game where this administration never admits a single failure of its own.

When in fact it is Duterte himself and his ilk in Congress who wasted four years in realizing the end to endo, increasing wages by abolishing the provincial rate system, stamping out corruption, freeing the country from foreign domination, ending the drug menace, and in making this country a primarily middle class nation in the immediate future. On the contrary it will, for convenience’s sake, make the pandemic a grand alibi in declaring a state of the nation that was never been good in the last four years and which, due to the persisting health and economic crises, will never become better for the rest of his term.

Workers will reject that kind of a narrative for it is Duterte’s failures in many aspects during the last four years, combined with its mishandling of the health crisis during the last four months, that make workers’ lives more miserable today. The virus came at a time workers job security remained unprotected with the veto of the anti-endo bill, while low wages, unemployment and underemployment leave workers with no savings to prepare for the rainy days.  I short, the massive loss of jobs and income today will only make living more unbearable for the millions of workers, formal and informal, local and overseas.

And so, who is the pasaway to blame for the sad state of the nation that we are in today? Certainly not the workers who were left behind during the last four years and who were forced into quarantine during the last four months.  Not the powerless masses who cannot afford the price of fighting the powerful.

Ang tunay na pasaway ay ang mga nasa kapangyarihan dahil sila ang mas sumusuway sa Konstitusyon at karapatan ng mamamayan. Silang inuna ang terror law sa halip na stimulus programs. Silang ang plano pagkatapos ng SONA ay magcha-cha habang nasa gitna tayo ng pandemya.

Sa madaling salita, si Duturte mismo ang tunay na pasaway.