duterte legacy to factor in inday sara 2010 mayoral bid

Dabawenyos do not easily forget good deeds, and this in-born trait  would deeply matter when they go to the polls in 2010 to elect a new mayor.

Mayor Rodrigo Duterte and his more than 20 years of serving Dabawenyos will factor much when Vice Mayor Sara Duterte attempts to fill the void to be left vacant by his father.

Mayor Duterte has already named Sara his successor and already she is emerging as another strong-willed individual, decisive and ready to stand by her principles—the very attributes that endeared Mayor Duterte to Dabawenyos.

When Dabawenyos choose a new leader in 2010, the city’s recent history is expected to factor much in their choice, and the Duterte legacy would be hard to forget with the lasting imprint it had played to change the course of Davao City’s history.

After being appointed vice mayor in the post-EDSA Aquino provisional government following the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship, Duterte trounced then interim mayor Zafiro Respicio in the 1988 elections, to manage a city that like the rest of the country was limping from the just-ended Marcos tyranny and the bloody left-over of a ten-year communist urban occupancy.

Duterte came to City Hall with the city in deep financial straits, an economy emaciated by capital flight that sought safer grounds to escape extortion by communist rebels, the communist Sparrow Unit on a killing spree, rampant criminality and a nervous citizenry yearning for a leader willing to clear the ugly rubbles left by the Marcos dictatorship and the insurgents that left hundreds of deaths in gruesome summary executions of police and military personnel and civilians.

Early on, Duterte saw peace and order as the determining factor that could bring back confidence in the city.

THE DUTERTE DOCTRINE

With a bankrupt economy, Duterte started his reign with the city’s latest annual revenue pegged at a measly P180 million, its march to progress cut off in late 70s by the dictatorship and the communist insurgency just as it was positioning itself as a premier city in Southern Mindanao.

Parlaying his close relations with the New People’s Army and the militant left-leaning community that he established while a city prosecutor before joining politics, Duterte made peace with the rebels and spared the city from the brutality and extortion that marked the years prior to his capture of City Hall.

The ominous events that sent strong signals to criminals that theirs days are numbered under the Duterte Doctrine were bloody and messy: massive slaughter of members of organized kidnap-and-extortion groups.

Duterte’s iron-fisted peace and order campaign—despite being maligned by human rights groups—is now enshrined as a key factor not only by the business community but the citizenry in the development of the city and in insuring investors that the city had shed off its past history of blood and mayhem and extortion by insurgents and by rampant criminality.

While he treated petty crimes, drug use and peddling, youth hooliganism and thievery with more than the necessary methods that raised a howl from human rights groups, the Duterte strong-fisted formula indeed sent a message that he was serious about the business of cleansing the city of criminal elements, petty or satanic.

Kidnappers and drug lords in the book of Duterte are a special breed that have no place in the city and deserved no less than quick justice, exemplified by the slaughter of 9 Taiwanese nationals running a drug laboratory at the outskirts of the city in seven years ago.

The gun speaking for the oppressed to hunt down criminals may be too much for the bleeding hearts, but it brought back the city to its feet, with people confident of being protected and the business community admitting the iron-fisted Duterte Doctrine is the formula that carved out a new direction of peace and order for the city.

QUANTUM LEAP

Today, Davao City after more than 20 years of the Duterte leadership is third among cities in the country with the biggest annual revenue that now stands at more than P3 billion. It has garnered almost all awards given out by the national government to LGUs, and made its mark in the world of investors and tourists when chosen by Asia Magazine as one of the Most Livable City in Asia.

The Davao City Government also has become a model for community participation in local governance, with Duterte giving voice to almost all sectors in decision making through deputies from the Muslim and tribal communities, religious, academe, environmentalist groups, the urban poor and other groups sitting in various local special bodies at his beak and call for consultations when crucial decisions are to be made.

He has solidified the local political landscape, bringing under the wings of his Hugpong sa Dabaw bloc almost the entire political community, leading to a unity that contributed much to hastened political and fiscal decisions that had the executive and legislative departments speaking a single voice in directions towards progress and development.

THE DUTERTE LEGACY

The Duterte legacy should start with the late Governor Vicente Duterte of the then undivided Davao and Mrs. Soledad Duterte, whose brand of public service forms part of Davao City’s colourful history. Gov. Duterte was among early Dabawenyos credited with having taken national positions having been named as Public

Works Secretary, while Mrs. Duterte, a teacher, was a strong influence before her retirement in education having been the superintendent of the Davao Province public school system.

But for present-day Dabawenyos, Duterte is the overwhelming factor in recent history with his more than 20 years as a public official.

His record-breaking feat at the service of the people has already surpassed by years those of local political legends Mayor Luis Santos (14 years) and Mayor Carmelo Porras (11 years): 2 years as Vice Mayor (1986-1988); 10 years as Mayor (1988-1998); three years as Congressman (1998-2001); and nine years ending in 2010 as Mayor (2001 to 2010); or a total of 24 long years.

INDAY SARA

Duterte has made no bones about Sara or son Paolo, now a city councilor representing the barangay captains, following in his footsteps. He has slammed accusation about a political dynasty in the offing, saying local politics needed new blood and that Sara and Paolo had to prove they are worth the trust and confidence of the people.

For now Sara, a lawyer, appears to be the next Duterte to sit at City Hall, and Duterte is prepping her up for the seat in 2010.

Will she make it?

For now, House Speaker Congressman Prospero Nograles is the only potential candidate who is willing to do battle with the mayoral candidate of Duterte. Nograles has always been a perennial aspirant to the top post, but suffered defeats in his mayoral bid in 1992 against Duterte and in 1998 against Mayor Ben de Guzman whose win was due mainly to Duterte’s support.

Of  late, Nograles has been beating his war drums and is said to have instigated the Commission on Human Rights to probe the summary executions in Davao City that he squarely blamed on Mayor Duterte.

He has filed charges against top City Hall officials who have been suspended by the Ombudsman for the demolition of a park sitting atop a main canal drain in Quezon Blvd. which had been named after the Speaker’s father.

Mayor Duterte, according to Nograles, could be suspended soon on a separate charge related to the demolition.

IT’S IN THE GENES

For Dabawenyos comfortable with the iron-fisted Duterte Doctrine, choosing a new mayor in 2010 would boil down to among others the crucial question of whether Sara could measure up to her father.

Already Sara has shown that brand of decisiveness and strong-willed attitude that has become the hallmark of the Duterte administration. While a neophyte, she has, like her father menacingly wielding his dried cow’s tail to send a signal to youth hooligans to behave, transformed the once fractious members of the Davao City Council, which she presides, into one meek cohesive lot.

She had made serious decisions while sitting as acting Mayor—some in harsh collision with Duterte’s previous pronouncements—further reinforcing public confidence she could carry on the flag if she makes it to City Hall in 2010.

Observers though say there is no need to debate whether Sara has the balls to be another Rodrigo Duterte. After all she has running in her veins the deadly combination of the volatile Cebuano blood of her father and the equally volatile German blood of her mother, Elizabeth Zimmerman Duterte.

The same observers also stress that Dabawenyos do not forget good deeds, and the Duterte legacy would matter much when Sara presents herself as the city’s new leader to Dabawenyos, who would not trust City Hall to be run by wannabes that hardly mattered in their lives the past 20 years.