GRP President Duterte is raising the Filipino people’s clamor for the return of the Balangiga bells but only for self-serving purposes: First, this is meant as countermove against calls by some sectors in the US to investigate violations of human rights in Duterte’s drug war. Secondly, he wants to use the Balangiga bells as a bargaining chip to push his insistence on the US to provide him with brand new weapons (instead of the second-hand junk which the US provides).

His pseudo-patriotism is meant to conceal his servility to the US. He is, in fact, so dependent on the US to feed his obsession to drop bombs on homes and schools. He is making so much noise about the history of US abuses in the country but is silent about current US military interventionism which serves his strongman rule and wars of death and destruction.

Duterte has become despicably mute in the face of US construction of several new military facilities inside AFP camps. He has no shame in upholding the anti-national US-RP Mutual Defense Treaty and all other unequal military treaties and in letting the US military remote-control the operations in Marawi City through its advisers and military contractors.

On the other hand, some US officials are hypocritics for invoking human rights in denouncing abuses in Duterte’s drug war. The US government is, in fact, equally culpable for all the abuses by the AFP which it has indoctrinated, armed, trained and used in waging its all-out war under Oplan Kapayapaan.