If Quezon City Representative Bong Suntay had made those coarse remarks against celebrity Anne Curtis during the Duterte administration, he would probably be met with laughter from most of his fellow lawmakers — the same lawmakers who laughed at and applauded every sexist remark made by the former president. 

These are the same lawmakers who  approved the Safe Spaces Act or the Bawal ang Bastos Act intended to protect women from acts of sexual harassment but never called out a misogynist president. And these are the same lawmakers who enabled the former president’s bloody war against the poor framed as a war on drugs.

And it was not only the lawmakers. It was practically the whole nation. The few who protested were booed and trolled on social media. Women who dared speak out against sexism and misogyny were threatened online with rape.     

So I would like to thank Suntay for what he did. He reminded us that public behavior is transactional. Among politicians, mimicking presidential behavior was a display of loyalty. “Mas bastos, mas loyal kay bos.” 

He also reminded us of the dark side of our national psyche, that there was a time when one man could unleash so much hate and anger and intolerance among seemingly well-mannered Filipinos. I have seen it online. Probably you did too. Friends and relatives became not only mindless defenders of Duterte but intolerable assholes as well. 

In those six years, the nation seemed to have lost its moral bearings. Intolerance and verbal abuse replaced civil discourse in the public sphere and even online, in our neighborhoods and homes. We began to scorn and avoid friends, neighbors, and relatives for being dilawan or DDS. 

In his midnight press conferences, the former president would ramble on, peppering his stream-of-consciousness declarations with rape jokes and verbal attacks on critics, political opponents, church people, and journalists. And predictably, online trolling and in many cases, physical attacks followed. It was not a leader using his imagination. He was giving marching orders.

With those in power perpetuating a culture of intolerance, we were choking in an atmosphere of hate, slander, and threats, depriving democracy the air of free expression needed to breathe. 

Ironically, the reprieve came with the election of the son of a former dictator in 2022.  

But if the demeanor and behavior of Vice President Sara Duterte and her supporters is an accurate indicator, the possible return of another Duterte to power, deemed by supporters as pre-ordained, poses a clear and present danger. Sebastian “Baste” Duterte, the vice mayor of Davao City and the vice president’s brother, could not be any clearer in his call to action: if voters want someone like their father to be the next president, they should vote for his sister.

The Dutertes are anchoring their bid for political resurrection on nostalgia. And what disappoints many of us is the unquestioning loyalty of the base, the appalling absence of outrage over misogynist acts and extra-judicial killings.

Some observers would attribute this to “tribalism,” the predisposition to support one who speaks like us, looks like us or shares our grievances. Others would say that rampant extrajudicial killings have desensitized a large part of the populace to a point where it was seen as necessary to instill discipline and protect their communities.

This desensitization, coupled with the repetitive claim that criminality, drug-related crime in particular, is on the rise bolsters the framing of a so-called weak president and the need for another Duterte to restore order.

Should that happen, we will be dealing with more than misogynists in Congress. – Rappler.com

Joey Salgado is a former journalist, and a government and political communications practitioner. He served as spokesperson for former vice president Jejomar Binay.