 Welcome to Global Connections here on ThinkTech's live streaming network. I'm your host, Grace Chang, here today with Professor Patricio Abinales of the University of Hawaii to talk about Duterte's mouth and Philippine politics today. Welcome, Professor Morales. Thank you. May I call you Jojo? Yeah, you can call me Jojo. Yes, and we're going to talk about the president of the Philippines today and Philippine politics as we're seeing it unfold recently. It's very, very eventful. And you teach Asian studies at the University of Hawaii. I do. And I run the Philippine seminar. And I'm running a new course called Food and Culture in Asia. Oh, interesting. For undergraduates. Yeah. And you've been at the University of Hawaii for five years now. Yeah, I'm going into my sixth year. Okay. Yeah, and welcome to the program. Thank you. Nice to have you here. Could you tell us a little bit more about your background before we begin? Oh, I had a very circuitous background. I come from the southern part of the Philippines in the now. I went to the University of Philippines in 72. We were the freshman year when Marcos declared martial law. So I never learned about democracy for the next 15 years. And then I taught the university before I accidentally ended up in grad school in Cornell. It's a long story. And I stayed there and met my wife there. And after that, we went to Ohio. My wife got a job there. And then we moved to Kyoto, Japan. And we stayed there for 10 years. And then Hawaii, UH, who hired me. Well, this title of today's program, Duterte's Mouth in Philippine Politics Today, this was your suggestion. And it's kind of, it came, it came a couple of weeks ago, but it's kind of perfect because the end of last week, President Rodrigo Duterte, he said he would stop cussing. And he's been a very interesting personality to have, as the head of state of the Philippines. And subsequently quickly broke that promise. But he's been a very dynamic figure and a bit of a controversial one. And a little bit of enigma, I think, from on this side of the Pacific to understand him. Yeah, he is. Well, Filipinos in the U.S., apparently, who could vote in the Philippines, voted highly for him. I think they say 40%. He's a very popular president among people in the South outside of Manila. He's a new politician for them, partly because he was mayor. And he's the first mayor to become president. And if you know the local politics in the Philippines, it's very personalized. It's all this glad handling and cursing and getting people to vote by paying for their ballots and all. And so what has happened is, the sort of language in local politics, which includes a lot of cursing, now becomes nationalized. He brings it there. And so my reaction to him, because I speak the same language as him, is to think of him of how my aunts curse. He actually reminds me of my aunts when they're drunk. They curse like them. So I grew up with that. I grew up in a small town where every campaign, political campaign, politicians would go up in the stage and curse everybody. I went to jail and I found him with his mistress. So it's called a tabloid type of speeches because you have to control the crowd. So you have to be an actor and all that. That's him. That's him. And the problem is he still thinks, I think he's still mayor of Davao City as his president now. And people tend to fail to remind him of that. So he's not, therefore, if you want to understand why he curses a lot, that is coming from the kind of city he grew up in. It was a... Davao in the 1960s was known as Las Vegas of the south, the Philippines south. There's a lot of smuggling. There's a lot of gambling. A lot of smuggled goods were coursed through Davao because he had a nice port. And it was also a town where some of those unusual characters become mayor. There was a former communist guerrilla who was sentimented and now supposedly to expand the movement there ends up disconnected from his comrades. And so he settles to Davao, becomes the police officer, police chief, and becomes mayor. So it's sort of a frontier town. And it has a gesture of university, but it never really went as high as in terms of exposure like Manila. Manila is the big metropolis because it's very cosmopolitan. Davao is not until very recently. And so the 30 became famous for the reason. One is he was actually the first one, the only mayor to bring peace to the city. In the 1970s, the Communist Party had urban guerrillas in the city and organizing them, organizing protests and strikes there. But then the military formed anti-communist anti-groups. So Davao city became a battle zone. In fact, the section, the section of Davao called Agdao, people call it Nicaragdao. Everybody, every day there was killings and all, over and above smuggling the drug trade and everyone thing. The 30 came to power promising to bring peace into Davao. And the story goes that the first thing he did was eliminate the right wing militia and then come to terms with the communists saying you can do your ambushes, you can ambush militias outside of major city jurisdiction. Don't come in, don't make, don't do trouble in the city. And then went after the targets indicates because he wanted to control, I mean the large part of Davao city were controlled by drugs indicates. And that's how this extrajudicial killing started. In the meantime, the history of president, when he became mayor, he became mayor, he's one of the first mayors in the Philippines to legalize prostitution. So he has houses for prostitutes, if they are sex workers, if they are, if they are beaten up by their parents, they have free medical care. He's also the first mayor of city council issued a statement in favor of LGBT. No other mayor did that. He's pro-environment, and he actually is in favor of free hospitals. In the 80s, they experimented with this, but it didn't work. But if you're a member of a cooperative, you join a hospital cooperative and everything is free from, from root canal to, you know, a wound in the toe. So it's very socially minded, and that allows for a couple of things. He has one of the most unusual coalitions in the city, because it consists of traditional politicians, reformists, and communists, and liberals. So they all work together under him. And that accounts for a number of things. It cleaned up the city. When I was doing my field research for my dissertation, I was in Davao. And one of the things that really fascinated me was every time Duterte catches someone who's trying to achieve, you know, stealing money from a taxi driver, he calls all the taxi driver per radio and says, line up a city hall, one punch each before I send this guy to jail. So these guys are like, wow. And people respond, you know. They're a different kind of justice. They're a kind of justice. Before I put you in the legal system, you can beat him up. So that's kind of a frontier, a kind of frontier by a character that made him. Some of the interesting developments that we met after I left was, it's one of the most no smoking cities in the Philippines. And it's one of two cities in the Philippines where nobody, everybody stops on a red light at 2 a.m. for fear that he might be around and he'll beat them up. And no smoking zone if you follow the speed limit. And that's basically it. And he has 99% support from the town. So many kind of social justice minded and he's been pretty effective. Even if heavy handed, I mean, that's one of the things I think in the U.S. press we hear most about him. We haven't heard that much about his previous political career, but as far as his conduct with the war on drugs, he's been pretty heavy handed as you were mentioning, how he cleaned up against the right wing militias when he was mayor. And it seems like he's been doing, using similar tactics on China. And that's I think the more worrisome because now you're dealing with the nation, you're not dealing with the city. And he thinks that the war he waged against criminals and drug addicts in the city could apply to the larger network, the nation. And I think that's a very big problem for him because you're president now. You have to have some, you represent the country. And if you're suggesting that, you know, allow the police to kill anybody and saying, I'll be like Hitler and kill like a million drug addicts, then that doesn't look nice. Even among Filipinos who expect their president to be at least honorable in principle. And so that's the problem that he has to face now. But then his reaction is typically the reaction of a mayor. He curses and he says, you know, okay, if you don't want this, then goodbye. You know, turn around and do something else. So it's, I think, difficult for his staff to handle someone like him now. It's also more difficult the fact that he actually, well, he reads a lot. He actually has this series of biases against the United States. And it's a personalized kind of politics now. Okay, yeah, because I mean, the relations with the U.S. has been, I guess, sort of turned around a little bit because of some of the things like, for example, yeah, the war on drug has conduct because, you know, some of the U.S. Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee are saying we will no longer sell the assault rifles, the national police, if they're going to use it, to violate human rights. And then also his President Duterte's recent statement that he announced the separation of the Philippines from the United States. Well, I think it's the product of, what he thought was a personal insult by the U.S. government on him. In 2004, an American sort of fortune seeker landed in Davao sending messages to the different rebel groups saying that he knew how to make bombs. One of the bombs he made exploded in his hotel room. And so he got hospitalized and was to be arrested. But while he was in the hospital, the U.S. Embassy came in and took him away and sent him back to the U.S. without informing Duterte. Now, remember, local mayors think of themselves as running cities on a personal basis. So he thought he considered it as an insult to his position as mayor. And so he's responsible that the U.S. military officers in Davao City, they could not come in. And then there's the story about him being denied a visa to the United States when he was trying to visit his girlfriend. And they think that that also was, you know, the emulation of having to line up and being told by a young consul that you can't, you know, go to the United States because with no explanation at all, hit on him. The third thing is, when he was a young man, he started under one of the founders of the Communist Party of the Philippines. You know, he was around in the sixties. It was the era of protest. It was also the era of Filipino nationalism and with a big segment of that led by Communists. So he was politicized by these professors and he still calls them professors. And he carried that to them. And of course what happened then is, as mayor, he took the criticism very personally and then lashed back at the U.S. This I think he can do it. He thinks he's stronger than anybody else. Yeah, he's made a lot of very strong statements. That's for sure. And I think it's raised a lot of eyebrows but interesting to hear about some of his background where he might be coming from. So thank you, Professor Avinalis. We will take a short break. You're watching Global Connections. I'm your host, Grace Chang, talking to Professor Patricio Avinalis about Duterte's mouth in Philippine politics today. We'll be back in a minute. Aloha, my name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Law Across the Sea. Join me every other Monday when we bring lawyers who know how to get across the sea to meet people and resolve problems into your house. Thank you. Hello, my name is Crystal. Let me tell you my talk show. I'm all about health. It's healthy to talk about sex. It's healthy to talk about things that people don't talk about. It's healthy to discuss things that you think are unhealthy because you need to talk about it. So I welcome you to watch Quok Talk and engage in some provocative discussions on things that do relate to healthy issues and have a well-balanced attitude in life. Join me. I'm with Professor Patricio Avinalis of the University of Hawaii, where he's a professor of Asian studies and we're talking here today about President Duterte of the Philippines, the title of our program, Duterte's Mouth and Philippine Politics Today because of the interesting things that President Duterte has been saying. Welcome back, Professor Avinalis. Thank you. So as we were talking about, you were providing us with some really interesting background as to maybe some of the ways that President Duterte is seeing the United States because his announcement of the separation with the U.S. and his kind of suggestions that we should cut these, perhaps cut the mutual defense treaty and joint military exercises. This is kind of, nothing has happened yet. This is coming from his mouth, but it is something that, I think, has raised a lot of eyebrows and some concern. Definitely, yeah. Because if you go down into the level of the bureaucracy, that's a completely different matter. I mean, the military, the military, especially the units operating in the south, you know, protecting the south from terrorists and infiltration trying to police this. It's a Muslim separatist group there, armed group. It's a Muslim kidnapping enterprise called Abu Sayyaf. These guys are able to contain these threats because of the help of American special forces. So they're worried about that. Intelligence that Americans' special forces provide was very instrumental in the death of a couple of kidnappers from the leaders of the Abu Sayyaf. And the other thing is the next generation, this senior generation of military officers have actually shifted away from being an insurgent force into an external defense force. And their training is in the U.S. They went to Fort Bragg, they went to Monterrey. So the kind of mentality they have is very American in training. And down from military exercises, tactics and strategies to the kind of bullets that you have is very much connected to the U.S. So that's the first thing that I think is going to be a deterrent to the 30th proclamation that he will separate the Philippines from the U.S. The second one is 92% of Filipinos love the United States. More than Americans. So there's a pure research study that showed which countries love the U.S. the most. Israel and the Philippines topped everybody else. And the U.S. I think was number four, number five. So 91% of Filipinos are pro-U.S. And there was a survey done on national and locally two weeks ago determining what Filipinos think of the Chinese. That's very negative. So he will encounter this. And there's what, 8 million Filipinos in the United States alone. 20 billion dollars of the income of the country are remittances from Filipinos abroad, including me. So his minister of finance says, okay, I think there's a limit to this. And I think the only one who's towing the line is the foreign secretary. But the major military and the finance sector, finance department are definitely saying you can do that. Yeah, because in the Philippines gets the most U.S. aid for maritime security in Southeast Asia, and especially with the conflict with China over the West Philippines, the Chinese called the South China Seas, and with this pronouncement of his separation from the U.S., Duterte has also suggested he wanted to move close to China. So this is very surprising given these kinds of conflicts in the nearby waters. Yeah, it's another contradiction here. The Chinese, I think one of the reasons why he's pro-China is the fact that if you go to Mindanao, his island, the Chinese are the fastest-moving, fastest-rising investment, as the fastest-riding investment in the island. Mining, export crops like from bananas, the pineapples, fish. So these are, these industries are targeting China now as the huge market. In other parts of the Philippines, Chinese investments are not really that high. So if you aggregate it, it's not really big, it's like 0.3%. If you stock where they're going, they're going to Mindanao. And therefore that's one reason, one financial reason why, one economic reason why Duterte says, you know, we have to get closer, have closer ties with China. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's very surprising, I mean, as far as he doesn't seem to be so concerned about the conflict over the territorial waters. No, and, oh yeah, because I forgot one thing about local politics in the Philippines. Everything is pragmatic, you know, there's no political programs, there's no policies. Everything is run personally, and coalitions and alliances go shift. And one of the things that's very, most local politicians do in terms of pragmatic politics is marry off the son to the rival's daughter to the United States. So for him, it's not a question of principle, it's a question of being pragmatic about it. We won't win a war against China. It's trying the way to settle it with China. I don't know, most Filipinos agree in principle, but probably are worried about going to China but then leaving the United States. Yeah, I mean, yeah, in other countries, there's kind of, you know, ambivalence about China before China's so-called rise, this kind of free market, which is led by Western economies, didn't really bring a lot of results. And so actually with Chinese going out more into international markets, there has been more immediate results. So I think there is kind of some, a little bit of interest in, well, what is the Chinese model, development and courting Chinese investment. But yeah, there's a lot of ambivalence about that I can see. But his, Duterte's envoy to China, Fidel Ramos, former president, he recently resigned, correct? It sounds like within the political decision-making elites in the Philippines, they're not necessarily with him on this. I think there is considerable debate inside. The one thing I forgot is that the 10 richest families in the Philippines are of Chinese Filipinos and have considerable investments in China and Southern China especially. That's one factor. But you're right. I think the cabinet meetings are, you know, becoming more and more divisive. There's debate on policy, because he brought in some communists into the cabinet, too. Very anti-American, along with pro-U.S. business officials. And this is reflected, this is probably one of the 100 reflectives of the way he governs. He focuses on one issue unless the others run the other issue. So he wants to kill drug addicts. So with the economy, with politics, agriculture, land reform, he passes down to appropriately secretaries and allows them to resolve things. It works with the city, but it doesn't work nationally. And I don't know how he's going to deal with this. I wrote a comical piece about his first day in cabinet where everybody was shouting at each other and he threatened to kill them. So I think the cabinet meetings are going to be more and more divisive and rancorous, I think. Yeah. Well, it's not that unusual. I mean, we're seeing in the American presidential elections that, yeah, there are people who are unsatisfied with kind of the way things have been going. Moving very slowly, change isn't moving within politics, isn't moving as quickly as change in people's lives. And there are some people who have some more radical or radically different approaches and that seems to be the case here, as we see, but not terribly unusual, I mean, as far as around the world. Yeah. I mean, Filipinas want peace. Peace in their communities, stability in their communities and the first culprit that they see is the drug addict in the corner selling, or the drug pusher selling, you know, heroin or methamphetamines for the children. So when he does this, you know, for Filipinos in these communities, it's a good sign that, you know, the most number one problem in the community has disappeared and now they can go on with their lives. So that's one of the reasons why it's very popular at the local level, especially among the poor. Yeah. Yeah, because people have immediate problems. It seems like he's been very at least effective and they can immediately grasp the impact of his approach. Would you say that the average person in the Philippines cares so much about his foreign policy, unlike, you know, you were talking about the decision makers in the defense or finance ministry? I think only in vaguely, they say, well, you know, sure, by guns in China, oh, it's worrisome to have the Americans cut off aid. But at the end of the day, it's, you know, how to live my life, how to continue with my livelihood. So it's no question that Filipinos are still applying in the big numbers to the U.S. to become immigrants. Like 4,000 Filipinos leave the international airport every day in search for jobs. So I think there's about 12, 13 million Filipinos abroad now. Yes. And so the sound bites are there because of TV and everything, but I doubt if it has really sunk in the most Filipinos' mind. I mean, it hasn't that sunk into my brother. My brothers are like, okay, sure, as long as he kills the drug addicts in our street, then that's fine with me. Yeah. He can do anything he wants. So he's popular in Mindanao, which is in the southern part of the Philippines. What about in other parts of the Philippines? It's popular in the North because he's allies with the children of Ferdinand Marcos. Uh-huh. He's unused. Actually, he's very, very popular among the elites. Is that right? Because of the peace and order thing. Filipino elites are just quiet about it, but they're happy that you have somebody who's guns of the crime. Is that popular among the intellectuals in the middle class? Because these are the groups that follow the law, that respect the law. So he's not popular. He's very popular with the Muslims, by the way, because they're going to give them their autonomy. So against him, it's a very formal group of civil society organizations, university presidents, university kids. And that's a very... They're fighting a lost cause at the moment. Yeah. Yeah. So very mixed feelings among different constituencies. That's very interesting. Yeah. My friends back home call me a moderate, the third neurologist. Because I had to go back and forth from Mindanao. So it's interesting to have somebody from Mindanao become president for the first time. And somebody who speaks my language, including the metaphors, as I said, told you. I spend more time laughing at these curses than being shocked by it, because I grew up with it. And on the other hand, you see these dead bodies every day, imported on media. You see this off the mark remark. He throws away his speech and rumbles about China and separation and joining an alliance with Russia. And that's also worrisome, because then his cabinet officials have to figure out what he was really saying. Yeah. And there's criticism there. So let's see what happens in the next, by the end of the year. Yes. Because he's only been in office since June 30th, but already made quite an impression overseas. And I'm sure among Filipinos within the country. Right. Well, thank you so much for coming here, Professor Alvinales. And I hope we'll see you again sometime. Oh, I'd be happy. Just give me a call. OK. Excellent. All right. You've been watching Global Connections with Grace Chang here with Professor Pedro Gil Alvinales talking about Philippine politics today. Join us next Thursday at 1 p.m. for more Global Connections.