Bigmouth or Crybaby?

Bigmouth or Crybaby?

By: Erreh Svaia

“A narrow mind and a wide mouth usually go together.”

Popular

In what seems to be a mighty contest in order to become the biggest jerk in politics, it looked like Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela's president had finally edged México's president Enrique Peña, with an inflation rate of more than 700%, Maduro was untouchable until Peña decided to invite Donald Trump to México in order to help Trump ascend on the USA presidential campaign polls, and it worked, but last week, a new competitor entered the race and made a surprising performance almost matching the previously mentioned duo. 

He was first known as "Duterte Harry" the major of a Filipino city named Davao, who vowed to eradicate crime using extrajudicial methods, traveling thru the streets on his motorcycle and carrying a gun, Rodrigo Duterte was as much cartoonish character as Donald Trump, or as Jaime Rodriguez, Nuevo León, México governor, unfortunately these clownish characters have found a niche displaying macho tough guy attitude and supposed zero tolerance policies towards crime. 

But in reality, when lion roars is because he is very afraid, and when Duterte, now president of the Philippines knew that president Obama was on an Asian tour, he expected Obama to make a harsh critic of his crime fighting agenda, putting special attention on Duterte violation of human rights, so Duterte struck first, was afraid and roared loud, calling Obama a "son of a whore", with Duterte, insults are ok, he has even insulted Pope Francis, again, considering that Duterte has vowed to shoot every drug user and drug dealer in the streets of the Philippines, an insult is not so much, but what this action revealed from Duterte, is how small brained and big mouth Duterte is. 

In a matter of hours, Duterte was denying his own words, calling the insult pure sarcasm, and in a surrealist turn, claiming it was not meant personal, Duterte might claim that he is a tough guy shooting small time thieves, but insulting the leader of one of the major economic partners of the Philippines was truly the dumbest thing Duterte has done, considering the aggressive intervention of China on the Chinese South Sea, and the USA influence on the ASEAN, which could leave Philippines isolated and at mercy of the ever expanding China. 

I'm not a lot into today's "strongman", they are made up by the media, and although it might have helped Duterte to win the elections in his country, even his terror campaign against crime, incendiary rape quotes, his claim at using death squads to end crimes and his nationalistic rhetoric wouldn't prove to be strong enough when facing the biggest army in Asia, so when Obama canceled his meeting with Duterte in Laos, and economic stocks sank due to Duterte big mouth, and  those were signs that Duterte Harry was in big trouble, so the strongman had to apologize and eat his rude words, a lesson he will not forget soon.