The plan of the University of the Philippines (UP) to confer an honorary doctorate degree on President Rodrigo Duterte has created quite a stir. What is the significance of the ruckus?
As soon as word got out that UP was going to give Mr. Duterte an honoris causa, an uproar erupted, not only among UP students and alumni but also from society at large. The resistance was grounded on the objectors’ belief that the honorary degree is undeserved.
Facebook lit up with similar protests (I don’t know about Twitter; I’m not active there). Probably trying to avoid further embarrassment, Duterte declined UP’s offer.
Was the brouhaha only a tempest in a tea cup, as a Facebook habitue conjectured? I don’t think so. I think it indicates a resistance against Duterte that’s slowly manifesting itself.
Mr. Duterte got high popularity numbers during the first nine months of his term. But those numbers have started to drop, as confirmed by the latest surveys. Will Duterte’s ratings continue to go south?
Early on in the Duterte presidency I offered the view that four sectors in society will be key to whatever will happen in the coming months or couple of years. These sectors are the Catholic Church, media, academe, and the military.
The Church has been making its voice heard lately. Media has been picking its spots, punching when it can without inviting attention to itself too overtly. The coming out of the millennials over the recent sneaky burial of the body of dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani and at this year’s anniversary of the Edsa People Power Revolution shows that ferment is alive on campus. And now the resistance at UP against an honorary degree to Mr. Duterte further confirms the studentry’s dislike for him.
The fourth key sector, the military, is still on the fence, not quite decided where it will stake out its fortunes in the current fight over the nation’s future direction.
My hunch is that many members of the military, especially among the rank and file, are caught in a quandary. They see Duterte as popular among a large segment of the population because of his down-to-earth ways and avowals of being pro-poor.
But they’re also bothered by their commander-in-chief’s dalliance with traditional ideological enemies China and Russia, and Duterte’s open disdain for long-time ally the United States. At this point, it’s hard to predict where the military will finally situate itself when crunch time comes.
But, clearly, the academe is moving toward a more open confrontation with Duterte. The more progressive campuses like UP will definitely line up against him. And the traditional inclination of the youth toward dissent and resistance against a repressive government will almost surely put them in a united front among their co-students.
This makes significant the open defiance and anger of UP students over their school administration’s plan to give Duterte an honorary doctorate degree. They’ve drawn a line in the sand announcing their disapproval of Duterte’s performance so far.
Duterte was keen enough to sense the resistance among UP students and nipped a brewing controversy in the bud by immediately declining the offer as soon as it threatened to become a troublesome issue.
But the UP students/alumni and society at large have made known their feelings. They’ve declared where they stand. Mr. Duterte knows where he stands with them.
***