People tell me to accept Duterte as the newly elected president and move on.
I have no problem with that.
His new legal status is now a given fact.
However, as a citizen, I have the right to follow my conscience and to reject him because:
(1) I don’t trust him based on his erratic, maverick, temperamental, narcissistic and anti-social behavior;
(2) I don’t accept his moral, psychological and intellectual fitness to be president;
(3) I don’t believe that he has a credible and doable political, economic, and foreign policy action plan that should guide his leadership;
(4) I don’t take as mere jokes his open threats of:
(a) Declaring a dictatorship, martial law or leftist revolutionary government;
(b) Abolishing Congress if it tries to impeach him;
(c) Coalescing and sharing political power with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the National People’s Army (NPA), and the National Democratic Front (NDF) and their “legal fronts”;
(d) Promoting vigilantism and extrajudicial killing of criminals (death squads) without due process of law and without the benefit of the Bill of Rights;
(e) Surrendering to Red China our constitutional and legal rights under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and Public International Law with respect to our maritime entitlements to the marine resources within our UNCLOS-mandated Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the West Philippine Sea;
(f) Destabilizing Constitutionalism and Democracy by dishonoring the Rule of Law and the Justice System and by projecting the idea that the entire universe of laws, rules, rights, and freedoms in our republic revolve only around him and are determined only by him without regard to the Constitution;
The majority (i.e., Duterte flock/voters) should respect the rights of the minority (i.e., anti-Duterte voters) to dissent, oppose and fiscalize the Duterte Establishment.
The Bill of Rights exists primarily to protect the rights of the minority, the helpless, the accused, and the underprivileged against the abuses and control of the majority or the government.
To dissent is free speech, a hallowed human right.
It is freedom of association.
It is freedom of thought and conscience.
It is freedom to be different.
It is freedom not to be part of the political regimentation of the majority.
It is freedom to be critical.
If the foregoing constitutional, human and universal rights are trampled upon by the majority, we lose our constitutional and libertarian soul as a people; we collectively murder our democratic republic; and we dishonor the spirits of our brave ancestors and heroes who revolted and died to achieve the freedoms we now enjoy.
Please remember that Duterte is not a “majority president”.
He is merely a “30% minority president”.
Because our Constitution does not contain a “run-off election” system, which is intended to insure that an elected president must garner at least 51% of the votes, technically speaking, Duterte is not the choice of the majority of the Filipinos.
Let us respect, preserve and protect the rights of the anti-Duterte voters/citizens to dissent, disagree, criticize, fiscalize and be different from the Duterte Establishment according to their conscience and the principles and philosophies that they cherish.
