Focus Policy Review 2019: “Critical Junction: Derailing or Accelerating the Dictatorship Express”

Focus Policy Review on the Progressive Agenda in the 2019 Elections and Beyond

This issue of the Focus Policy Review explores how the Duterte administration responded to key issues through its policies and action points. These responses, which in a nutshell are very neoliberal and authoritarian, fall under Duterte’s promised change at the beginning of his presidency. Thus, the underpinning question of the assessment that is directed to the electorate is this: “Is Duterte’s promised change still the change we want to pursue?”

In this issue:

• Introduction: Is Duterte Invincible?
• Why We Should Not Dance to Duterte and Arroyo’s Cha-Cha: Unpacking the Neoliberal and Authoritarian Agenda Behind Federalism – by Bianca Martinez
• The Price of Taming Inflation – by Joseph Purugganan
• Surviving in a Fading Countryside: The Plight of Small Food Producers under Duterte – by Raphael Baladad
• Laban-Laban: Cleansing the Augean Stables – by Galileo de Guzman Castillo
• In Hot Water: Notes on Metro Manila’s Water Woes– by Galileo de Guzman Castillo
• Selective Transparency, Inconsistent Accountability: Unpacking Duterte’s Anti-Corruption Campaign – by Raphael Baladad
• Stopping the Slide: Democracy and Human Rights Decline under Duterte – by Joseph Purugganan
• Misogyny, Neoliberalism, and Despotism: Shoring up Duterte’s Anti-Women Agenda – by Bianca Martinez
• Kalinaw sa Mindanao: Just and Lasting Peace in the Land of Promise – by Galileo de Guzman Castillo