Happy 2018 everyone! Looking forward to brighter days under the Duterte Administration. He's one of the hottest topics last year and for sure, you have read some articles about him for a thing or two. I'm pretty sure that most of what you have read are bad news that are happening in my country.
I'm here to showcase the good things that he made for this struggling country of mine and of my fellow Filipinos. I need YOU to have an open mind and clear out everything bad you've been fed about this man just for a couple of minutes and understand why a foul mouthed leader became one of the greatest leaders our country ever had. :)
First of all, I would like to start by saying that I am living in one of the core/center cities within Metro Manila. I am just your average Joe, trying to survive with my wife and 2 year old kid on a 20,000 PHP (401 USD) salary a month. My take home pay for that monthly amount is averaging to 15,000-16,000 PHP because of the tax and government fees. I don't own a house because I don't have the money to pay for the down payment. We are currently living on a 9,000 php monthly payment for an Apartment so that leaves me with 7,000 PHP to budget for utility bills and for our food plus my transportation allowances. My electricity bill is about 2,000-3,000 PHP per month and thankfully my water bill is just 250-300 PHP.
To survive here in the city, one must atleast have a monthly income of 30,000 PHP to get a decent apartment and have a big leeway for expenses. But that's only good if you are single. But for people like me that have families to feed, it's not enough, how much more for my monthly income of 15-16K a month.
Owning a car here in my country is considered a luxury. If you own a car, you are considered rich since buying a car here costs 600K PHP - 1.2 Million PHP for low tier and mid tier cars. If you have inherited a house by your parents, you are considered very lucky since you don't have to worry about sleeping without a roof.
I work in the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) Industry or popularly called a Contact Center Representative. Majority of the BPO employees like myself works in the night shift . We are struggling with our social life and of course with our health. If you are curious why we stick with this kind of job? It's because having a 20K PHP monthly salary is already being considered beyond slightly average. Entry level white collar jobs starts at 20K-30K (exclusive of tax and govt. fees ) while blue collar jobs have a minimum wage pay of 512 PHP per day (8 hours work). Many blue collar jobs are being taken advantage of and some companies sometimes pay them below the minimum wage pay.
By now, you probably have an idea how hard the life in here for the middle class. How much more for the minimum wage earners?
Because of these imbalance, some folks live the life of crime. And majority of these criminals are into Methamphetamine or what we call Shabu. Drug users/criminals becomes fearless when they are high and this drug gives them the confidence to do crimes, like stopping people in the dark and forcing them to give their money and phones or entering to people's home to steal some items or anything what their minds comes up with.
Women are the most unlucky of these victims. Some of them are being raped,murdered or sometimes, entire family being massacred because of addicts high on drugs.
There was even news here about a security guard working on a night shift who came home just to find out that his mother-in-law, wife and 3 children were brutally raped and massacred by his three neighbor addicts.
(Here's an article about that)
These kind of news were common before the Duterte Admin. Majority of the receivers of these crimes are people who are working at nights and come home late. We had Presidents who are very good and sweet with their words who did not do enough to tackle the problem. Criminals are getting more confident and daring each passing days and more innocent people are getting killed.
Some of our politicians wants to tackle the problem in a medical perspective but no one wants to admit that they are using Shabu. Some of these politicians are Drug Lords themselves and wants to to create a law to provide more income for their drug trade.
And here comes a man who loves to curse and likes to put his middle finger in front of the media. He was a mayor of a drug free city at that time and it was an open secret that drug users who don't want to give up drugs gets killed and pushers who wants to make business on his city get their heads drilled with bullet holes. I know it's a brutal tactic but it's effect really showcase how Davao City became one of the safest cities in the world and how it's economy flourishes and it can actually stand on its own.
The one good thing about this man is he doesn't just hate drugs. He hates corruption at most. Because he knows that the greatest obstacle of this country are corrupt politicians who are primarily the drug lords themselves and the corrupt system the oligarchs of this country created.
How can Filipinos vote for an iron fist leader when they had just a dictator decades ago? Well, the answer is politics itself. The said dictator was replaced by a more corrupt people who enriched themselves with riches of this country while putting the weight of the consequences to the ordinary people.
This might still get bloody but heck, If I can go to work without worrying about the welfare of my family at night, then it's a good trade off. I can basically say that Duterte supporters are sick of innocents getting killed and slow justice for the victims since cases takes years before suspects are convicted. Sad thing about this also is some of the criminals live a luxurious life in jail because some drug lords made the Penitentiary their homebase for their drug business.
I can say that Duterte is the equalizer of this plot. Our way up may have some obstacles to overcome but we are optimistic that we will be able to get into the end zone.
As of right now, Duterte made an executive order that those people earning 25K PHP below will be exempted from tax. Those people earning 26k-30K will only have to pay a very small amount of tax. And these are the things that we voted for. Low crimes and high stability. Not for us but for the generations to come.
PS
Proud Duterte Supporter.
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