IT seems after five years in office, some people still fail to understand President Rodrigo Roa Duterte (PRRD) from his words to his actuations. It may not be the presidential speech we hear often in the wee hours via badly edited broadcast that sometimes one gets to ask — with technology and all, why can’t they do a better job of splicing in order that the video aids the national address? But then again, he has never intended to make things clear. Rather, an exit is always carefully integrated in order that presidential addresses become so unclear as to get the audience guessing in the direction suggested by Duterte. If he flips it the following day, he gets away with it and everyone is left holding an empty bag.
PRRD is also a veritable troll in the way he goes off the cuff in his addresses to often remind people of certain individuals. His presidential speech is full of metaphors and hyperbole some would often ridicule it as unpresidential. But that has often been his way of communicating. He may not be good by the tradition of presidential speeches, but it is intriguing to see who are his audience in these scathing remarks. It would be interesting to see most of the off-the-cuff speeches are actually communication exits that define the nature of his politics. He answers straight using the bully pulpit, which ends up not as policy but more political contrast thereby controlling the narrative. In the past five years, he has continued to control the framing and the priming, allowing others to enter the carefully laid out trap for him to pounce back and get his base riled up.
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