Presidential hopeful Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte on Wednesday offered the country’s top business executives and leaders a glimpse of what his presidency would look like should he get elected, including granting pardon to himself and possibly 5,000 others.
The Davao City mayor came to the luncheon meeting of the Makati Business Club (MBC) at the Peninsula Hotel dressed in a collared shirt to speak to businessmen and diplomats mostly in business suits.
At first he was reading a prepared speech, but at one point the mayor went off script and began a usual long and winding speech, mostly centered on how he would stop criminality and corruption in the country.
In the hourlong speech he delivered in a mix of Filipino and English, he uttered expletives at least eight times and called everyone in government “corrupt,” especially trial judges and members of the Department of Justice.
Deathly silence
When he said his first cuss word, nobody in the audience, including Ayala Corp. president Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, his brother Fernando, PLDT chair Manny V. Pangilinan, MBC chair Ramon del Rosario was heard laughing.
Duterte is the third presidential candidate to speak before MBC members, after former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas and Sen. Grace Poe last month.
“It is a deathly silence (we have here now.) Relax, I am not the man I am portrayed to be by some,” Duterte told the businessmen.
The Davao mayor then asked his assistant, Christopher “Bong” Go, to hand him his speech which he said was “a short one” containing his agenda.
But as usual, Duterte proceeded with his anecdotes.
He said he did not have the credentials of a President. “I am just an ordinary man. My grade has always been 75,” he said.
As if still joking, he told the business community that he was willing to copy the programs of his predecessor and his rivals if they would benefit the country.
Mistresses, annulled
He admitted being a womanizer and turned to the audience saying most of the men in the room have their own mistresses.
“I’m (My marriage has been) annulled. What am I supposed to do with my thing? Let it stand forever?” he said.
Duterte was reported to have at least four girlfriends, apart from his common-law wife Honeylet Avanceña. His marriage to Elizabeth Zimmerman, mother of his three children, was annulled in 1998.
In between anecdotes and self-deprecating jokes, he went back to his platform, which he said included doubling the salary of policemen who at a minimum get P14,000 a month.
He told the businessmen about a provision in the Constitution on granting a pardon. “In the Constitution, it says the President can grant conditional or absolute pardon or grant amnesty with the concurrence of Congress,” he said.
“When a police officer is caught in a cross fire and fired at a civilian. I will sign, ‘Pardon is given to … I don’t mind giving 5,000 pardons a day.”
He said that he would even do it to himself. “After six years, ‘Pardon is hereby given to Rodrigo Duterte for the crime of multiple murder, signed by Rodrigo Duterte,” he said drawing laughter.
Duterte also warned Congress, the Commission on Human Rights and Office of the Ombudsman against stopping him.
“We have many lawyers. I still have my decency. Congress, the Commission on Human Rights and the Ombudsman must not stop me because I have a task to do, a very important one for this nation, especially for the protection of women and children,” he said.
Gunfighter
Duterte shared how violent a ruler he could be. “I slap people in public, especially erring policemen. I can even challenge them to a duel. I am a gunfighter,” he said.
The Davao City mayor, who many times pronounced he subscribes to socialism, announced for the first time during the event that he would stop the land reform program of the government since it had served only the landlords.
In an interview afterward, Duterte took a step back and said land reform would be further reviewed.
He also remarked about cutting down on infrastructure projects except the mass transit system, which he said the public badly needed.
Priority
His priority, he said, would be peace and order, education, and health.
After Duterte’s speech took most of the time, a scheduled question-and-answer portion in the program has been canceled by the MBC organizers.
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