1 day Ago By Herbie Gomez
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rapplerAds.displayAd( "mobile-middle-1" );Back in the day, being young meant raising hell, asking hard questions, and flipping the script. It was loud, messy, and dangerous in the best possible way.
That spark didn’t just fade at the Ateneo de Davao University — it lined up for a class photo in a Duterte shirt, all smiles for the cameras.No questions. No pushback.
Not even boredom. Just a resounding yes.Blue Vote 2025, straight from Ateneo de Davao University (AdDU), asked the students and the academic crowd who they liked.
Well, surprise, surprise — they like the Duterte dynasty!Atenews, the university’s official publication, reported that the survey was part of a University Community Engagement and Advocacy Council (UCEAC) initiative. Dr. Randell Espina, the project lead and dean of AdDU’s School of Engineering and Architecture, stressed that the survey was non-partisan, university-funded, and independent.
The results, released March 28, showed detained ex-president Rodrigo Duterte leading the mayoral race with 68.37%. His son Baste gets 60% for vice mayor.
Paolo Duterte owns the 1st congressional district with 56%, while his son Omar takes 50% in the 2nd. In the 3rd, Isidro Ungab leads with 40%. He’s not a Duterte, but close enough to park in the family garage without raising eyebrows.
So much for youth lighting fires. There, it seems they just prefer the arsonist who owns the matches.It’s not going to be an election in Davao if the AdDU Blue Vote survey results are reflective of the city’s pulse.
Rather, it is going to be a ritual or a coronation cloaked in the guise of democratic choice. Democracy in Davao isn’t going to be a contest of ideas, but rather a ceremony of inheritance, or so it seems.What is baffling is not that the Dutertes are running again like it is something surprising in a country where political dynasties would field even their pet dogs if the election rules allowed it.
It is that this is the pulse of people in a community, whose very soul is supposed to resist this kind of political pageantry. And this at a Jesuit university, no less, where minds are supposedly trained to think critically, challenge injustice, and dare ask the difficult questions.The survey involved 474 respondents in the campus, including 259 students.
Their consensus was this: power should be held by those who already held it in Davao since the 1980s — that the Duterte dynasty deserves yet another turn, for the nth time, at the wheel.Contradictions It gets better. The Dutertes are not just dominating the local races.
In the senatorial ranking, Duterte’s longtime lapdog, Bong Go, leads with 55%. Those looking for a silver lining may find one in Bam Aquino (not a Duterte footstool) who actually comes in second with 51%. But right behind him at 42% is Ronald dela Rosa, Duterte’s old police chief whom the ex-president called a DDS, in the context of the Davao Death Squad, during a Senate hearing.
Apparently, that kind of loyalty and DDS serial killings poll well in Davao’s Ateneo.window.rapplerAds.
displayAd( "middle-2" );window.rapplerAds.displayAd( "mobile-middle-2" );And just when you thought the contradiction couldn’t get any juicier, here come senatorial bets Heidi Mendoza and Luke Espiritu sliding into the top five with 40% and 38%, respectively.
So now you have Go and Dela Rosa rubbing elbows with Aquino, Mendoza, and Espiritu. That’s not a contradiction? Hell, that’s a political buffet where logic goes to die.Must Read Duterte Senate bets surge in Pulse Asia poll after ex-president’s ICC arrest The contradiction is revealing, and one cannot help but be struck by this irony: 73% of respondents support the resumption of peace talks with the National Democratic Front, yet yearn for the very man who trashed those talks, vilified activists, and red-tagged anyone who dared to question.
This shows a generation that’s grown comfortable with the Duterte dynasty.It looks like the Dutertes don’t need to campaign anymore in Ateneo de Davao or the city itself. Their names do the walking.
The students speak of change while preferring permanence. They long for peace, but want Duterte, his bloodline, and all the unpeace that he brings. They want good governance, yet cheer on the old Duterte mess and all the violence and brutality that come with it.
I’m not sure this still passes as healthy democracy. It looks more like democracy snoring, or running amok.Cautionary taleSo what went wrong?Maybe the enemy was never just the Duterte dynasty.
Duterte is only the surname stamped on the infection. The real disease is a society that lets this happen again and again, and then mistakes it for political maturity and patriotism.Did the system fail the kids, or did they surrender willingly? Did we fail to teach them courage, or did they trade it for comfort?What the Blue Vote 2025 reveals is not just one family’s hold on a city.
It’s the seductive grip of authoritarianism on the young, and even on our academics. Duterte isn’t winning despite his record. Rather, he’s winning because of it in a place where the line between right and wrong is blurry.
Democracy, that fragile idea now limping across the archipelago, deserves better than this dynastic masquerade. But in Davao City, specifically inside the very halls where ideas are supposed to breathe, the Duterte brand still reigns.One wonders with no small measure of dread and bewilderment — what in the world are our students being taught?window.
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displayAd( "mobile-middle-3" );Make no mistake: the Duterte administration may well be remembered as one of the most grotesque regimes in modern history not just for its brutality, but for reveling in it. It flaunted misogyny, mocked due process, and treated human rights as a joke. Vindictive and arrogant, it mistook vengeance for justice and propaganda for governance.
It lied and made up stories without shame, punished dissent, and demanded unconditional loyalty. Its warped nationalism replaced reason with myth, and control with cruelty. If George Orwell warned of such regimes, Duterte’s rule was the cautionary tale — totalitarianism with a smirk, smug in its abuses and blind to its own monstrosity.
Pastilan. – Rappler.comMust Read [Pastilan] If Duterte were truly brave, why does a courtroom scare him?.
