1. The President is a Child
“Help me, mom. I’m just a nobody.”
His words heavily weighed down an emotional weep across his mother’s stiffened and closed wall. His
sobbing carried in itself a helpless plea like a boy needing a tight hug and imploring her mother to her rescue.
But when she realized his mother never heard his plea, he was not a little boy anymore. Over the years, he has
been transformed to some big guy whose sixteen million teardrops humbled him to the ground, at least in his
most vulnerable tendencies away from the office. And when he found her mother almost nearer than she had
ever been before, she finally hears now his cry. And despite its vague sound, she strives to throw him back a
tight hug, hushes him, and helps him up.
Her son is no longer a crybaby now, but a leader who cries for change. President Rodrigo Duterte is
currently leading a hundred million people as one nation. He came to father a land that has been tainted with
filthy vices and teemed with people who turned so hard to tame like the golden calf worshippers disobeying
Moses. The appropriate act should be that the disobedient ones need to undergo sanctions and penalties ―
tear down the rampant corruption, criminality, illegal drugs, and all heartaches that make a nation worse and
cry. Hate the sin, not the sinner.
“This was the battlecry articulated by me on behalf of the people hungry for genuine and meaningful
change. But the change, if it is to be permanent and significant, must start with us and in us,” Duterte said in his
first speech as the new president of the Philippines.
“My job is to bring peace. My job is to talk to the enemies of the state and see if I could make a
difference in our lives,” he added.
2. His people, however, are abusive, at least among those who are. In effect to this, aside
from having been diagnosed with am anti-social narcissistic personality disorder, the president
has blown his fuse so hard. He said that during his presidency, it will be bloody. He would often
curse in his remarks on certain disgusting issues, especially on war on drugs. He kept tirades
against his foreign critics such as former US President Barack Obama, the US government, the
United Nations, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and the European Union for unfavorably
questioning and doubting his efforts to resolve drug-related activities.
“Criminals kill criminals. That is not my worry. It is the extrajudicial killing of people
getting rid of the criminals by their own hands,” said Duterte.
Parents went apprehensive about their children’s safety and future. Imagining their
children crying before them and asking for help. Unknown to them that that is the same
helpless act of a child whom they would later follow or despise. The president is a child while
he buries his face in his mother’s solace.
On a late midsummer afternoon after the elections, Duterte paid visit to the grave of
his parents, Vicente and Soleng. He was wearing a polo shirt with white, red, and blue stripes,
trying to be more decent and presentable to them, should they be at least happy for what their
child has become now.
He might have been enduring a heavy emotion as to the manner he could have
delivered the news of his presidency. During his last minutes of visit, he felt a swift drift of tears
overwhelming his face. At that moment, he was not a president of a nation. He was a child of a
mother.
While crying, he whispered to this mother, “Help me, mom. I’m just a nobody.”
