What is outright baffling is that these high marks in performance come at a time when she has been doing less, not more, in the public sphere. Since resigning from her post as Secretary of Education and with the defunding of her office's projects, Duterte has had no substantial national platform to anchor any real performance on. When survey firms and political analysts treat these numbers as reflections of ethical conduct or competence, they become complicit in a broader cultural misappropriation of terms, where trust means affection, and performance is a proxy for name recall. The Duterte name has become, for many, a symbol of defiance against the Manila-centric elite and a stand-in for the aspirations of the disenfranchised. But if that trust is rooted in myth rather than merit, and in the face of serious allegations, it tells us less about her and more about us. Read Full Story
