Radical

Just a thought.

Our country was sick for a very long time. In fact, this was what we were called — “Asia’s sick man." While our ASEAN neighbors soared and did figure 8’s in the sky, there we were, stuck in the mud — skeletal, gaunt cheekbones clutching our stomachs because we were famished and we could barely move.

We were weighed down by corruption. One of our biggest — if not our biggest problem was that those whose job it was to make us well were in fact the ones who made us the sickest -- our disgusting public servants.

The biggest thieves of the republic. Plunderers in fact who, it seemed, had an ongoing pissing contest on who could piss on the Filipino people the most.

It had gotten so bad that we stopped looking to them for solutions because it was a given — they were our biggest problem. On top of that, they got high marks for incompetence and indifference. So they stole, created Gordian knots where there once was none and they made our lives living hell and — tut tut — they didn’t give half a shit that they did. Panalo, right?

And on days when my soul turned black, it was all I could do not to rush to Congress and Senate and Malacañang with a flamethrower in my hand and fry these moral derelicts to kingdom come.

Their bellies busted while all around me I saw hunger. They lived in mansions eye popping for their vulgarity and bad taste and too, for the brazenness and shameless display of wealth stolen from the Filipino people.

And that drug menace whose magnitude we didn’t think was significant? Now we have some idea what it is we truly have. It’s like a doctor saying, “Yes, you have Stage 3 cancer”when all time, all we thought we had was a runny nose.

And while it managed to gob smack a lot of us — like we’d been sucker-punched in the gut, the good news is now we have some idea how to tackle this problem. Yes it is gargantuan but if we’re smart enough, we will go to the very roots of this problem and then attack it.

Very clearly then, we were on our deathbed.

Do you remember this?

Or have your coconuts gone soft so now you miss those days and are you one of those nincompoops who keep saying “It’s going to be a very long 5 and a half years, oh boy..” Sigh sigh sigh all over the place.

I hope you hear me when I say this then.

We were very sick then and while I don’t think we are nowhere near the pink of health we would like to be in, I think our coordinates have been corrected significantly so that we are on our way to having some shot at good health.

Nothing is a done deal right now. What with this pesky VP and her gang of noonoos who keep undermining every little gain we make — involving international media even and who would think the economic devastation of our country as great news.

But I think that we are on the right path now.

If all we want for our country is to survive for a generation or two and if all we think about is ourselves— not those who are dying by the wayside, caught up in the deadly vortex of poverty, then maybe we would be right in giving Rodrigo Duterte grief for the unorthodox methods he employs and philosophies he espouses.

But if you are like me – someone who’d like to see her country not just survive but THRIVE and be all it can be to its citizens — their fertile ground — in the shortest possible time, then you just might see Rodrigo Duterte the way I do — a rebel, a revolutionary, someone so different and so radical because these are what the times call for: different and radical.

EXACTLY SOMEONE WE NEED.

That’s all there is to it for me. Rodrigo Duterte is an idea whose time has come. So yeah, I’ve had no problem rocking and rolling with this man.

I get it.

Crystal clear.