An extra challenge

EVEN during the campaign trail, it was clear to me that if Rodrigo Duterte won, one of the greatest challenges would be to build a communications team that could keep up with the man. And it’s not just the jokes and banter, but also the way he shifts from one topic to another, and then sometimes dismisses or debunks something in one fell swoop.

Now that he is President-elect Duterte, he is proving to be a challenge even to us, the audience that hangs on to his every word, because he is after all giving us a Cabinet unlike any we’ve seen before: local officials unknown to imperial Manila, members of the military alongside militants. He is also speaking in a way that we do not think is fit for any leader, and I am hard put to remove what he says from how he says it.