Joma: Duterte now having coup jitters

LUCENA CITY –– Communist rebel leader Jose Maria “Joma” Sison was convinced that President Duterte was now afraid that the police and the military would turn against him any time.

“Duterte is having coup jitters. He is feeling the heat and is getting wet in his pants,” Sison, Communist Party of the Philippines founder, said in a solicited reaction from his base in Utrecht, The Netherlands Tuesday night.

Sison said Duterte now anticipates that the people “can rise in gigantic mass actions against his traitorous, tyrannical, brutal and corrupt regime and the military and police can turn against him as they did against Marcos and Estrada.”

Duterte appealed to the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police to refrain from staging a coup d’etat during his term.

“Do not do it, please, during my term,” he said in his speech at the celebration of the 72nd anniversary of the Philippine Air Force at Villamor Air Base on Tuesday, July 2, in Pasay City.

“I know that the Armed Forces and the police will have to decide one day, somehow,” he added.

Duterte told the military and the police he did not want violence and that if they wanted to oust him, they could simply call him, as he would be willing to give them the power.