Three days before Halloween, a ghost appeared at the Senate. 

Curse-laden speeches, rambling thoughts, and midnight press briefings all seemed like a distant memory — until we heard that voice again, like Emperor Palpatine coming to life in Star Wars Episode IX. Two years after his time in power ended, the nation held its breath as former president Rodrigo Duterte got near-unlimited airtime on Monday, October 28, at a Senate hearing on his bloody drug war.

Many Filipinos, including myself, worried that the Senate simply gave this Davao politician a platform. His words, I feared, will further twist our sense of right and wrong, the way “My God, I hate drugs!” made killing acceptable in this deeply Catholic nation.

Duterte, a 79-year-old former mayor who has never lost an election over the past 36 years, knows the mind of the Filipino. The old man, in fact, holds a key to our nation’s soul. That is how Duterte justifies his war on drugs — which, according to human rights groups, killed up to 30,000 Filipinos — from a moral standpoint. 

It’s a deeply rooted Filipino perspective that Duterte exploits: a view of God as “Punisher,” the supreme being who punishes wrongdoers more than he embraces sinners.

During the eight-hour Senate hearing, I realized how Duterte sought to win back the Filipino heart through twisted moral reasoning. The context is the declining popularity of his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, after a fallout with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. that thrust the Duterte dynasty into its biggest challenge in decades.

“I am unforgiving,” Duterte said in Filipino during the Senate probe. He said has a short fuse for criminals who rob, rape, and kill the innocent, including women and children. “If you are the mayor, how do you deal with the problem?”

The former president also justified his foul language, in a non-apology to opposition senator Risa Hontiveros. “I would like to express my apologies, especially to Senator Hontiveros, because she is sensitive to these things. My character is really like that,” he said. “I’m rude, I’m shameless, because I came from below.”

Hontiveros shot back in Filipino: “I am not sensitive. I just don’t want rudeness, I don’t want shamelessness, especially when we’re talking about serious matters like the war on drugs and extrajudicial killings.”

“I am rude, Ma’am. I am really shameless,” Duterte answered. “That’s the truth. Perhaps I would not have been president if I were not rude, if I were not shameless.”

This is the moral universe of Davao’s Punisher: killing is justified, and cursing is part of the equation, if it means eradicating criminals and protecting the Filipino.

‘Exacting in his punishment to sinners’

It is a “social bandit-like morality” that Duterte espouses, according to Japanese scholar Wataru Kusaka in his 2017 journal article, “Bandit Grabbed the State: Duterte’s Moral Politics.”

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Social bandit-like morality “is characterized by the coexistence of compassion and violence under a patriarchal boss who maintains justice outside of the law,” Kusaka said. In this context, Duterte “insisted that executing bad criminals in order to save the nation was justifiable from a moral standpoint, which was superior to the rule of law.”

Many people see Robinhood here.

But can it also be a kind of Bathala?

In his 1968 “Notes on Philippine Divinities,” the late anthropologist and University of the Philippines professor emeritus Felipe Landa Jocano described Bathala as “the highest ranking deity of the ancient Tagalogs.” That was even before Spain brought Catholicism here in the 16th century, eventually making the Philippines the world’s third biggest population of Catholics.

“Bathala was said to be the creator of all things — the sky, the earth, and all the vegetation around us. He dwelt in the highest realm of the eternal space called kawalhatian or sky. Just and merciful, he was said to be the sustainer, keeper, nourisher, and protector of mankind,” Jocano wrote.

“While Bathala was said to be compassionate and forever understanding to contrite hearts seeking forgiveness, he was equally exacting in his punishments to sinners. He did not hesitate to send thunder and lightning to strike the transgressors of his laws,” the anthropologist said. 

“His power and goodness were devoted to the interests of the people to whom he was the almighty protector,” Jocano added.

Precolonial Filipinos worshiped similar deities in other parts of the country.

In Zambales, Jocano said, there was the highest-ranking deity named Malayari.

Malayari, the creator, “was the master of life and lord of death.” This deity “was compassionate and loving,” but “was also exacting and cruel in his punishment of those who ignored his commandments.” Malayari “would send down disease, famine, misery, and destruction to the unbelievers, especially those who refused to offer him sacrifices.”

‘God needed to appoint Duterte’

Belief in Bathala (or Malayari) — compassionate to the poor but ruthless to lawbreakers — could be part of what social anthropologist Melba Padilla Maggay calls the “deep structures” of Filipino culture. In contrast with “surface structures” that can easily be altered, she said deep structures involve the consciousness, the heart, and “the depths of a people’s soul.”

I surmise it’s one of the reasons why a number of Filipino Christian leaders even believe that God “appointed” Duterte — the subject of a 2019 academic paper by sociologist of religion Jayeel Cornelio and researcher Erron Medina titled, “Christianity and Duterte’s War on Drugs in the Philippines.”

One of their interviewees, a Baptist leader called Pastor Julius, believed that “Duterte is God’s way of ‘punishing’ Philippine society for its sins.” By allowing Duterte to win, God was supposedly testing the Filipino faith. Pastor Julius said, “God needed to appoint Duterte in order to get Filipinos to repent.” 

In the Christian tradition, God indeed is known for punishing the wicked, and rightly so.

But it also leads to wickedness — and the rise of demagogues such as Duterte — when we put excessive focus on a God of punishment instead of a God of mercy and compassion.

In an interview with the Vatican Insider published in 2017, Franciscan priest Father Baltazar Obico sought to explain Duterte’s popularity despite opposition by Catholic leaders. 

“Too often, Philippine people see God as a violent distributor of punishments,” Obico said. “God is a Redeemer, not an avenger. Filipinos should change their idea about the nature of God who, in His infinite mercy, can only wish for the salvation of the whole humankind.”

Preventing another Rodrigo Duterte is a challenge not only to politicians, but also to people who shape our image of God. – Rappler.com