President Rodrigo Roa Duterte, in his speech during the event dubbed ‘Panaghiusa Para sa Kalinaw (Unity for Peace)’ at the Naval Station Felix Apolinario in Panacan, Davao City on December 21, 2017, explains to the 668 New People’s Army rebel returnees the various benefits that they will get under the Comprehensive Local Integration Program (CLIP). KARL NORMAN ALONZO/PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO
DAVAO CITY – In a soliloquy reminiscent of deposed President Joseph Estrada’s inaugural promise “walang kaibigan, walang kumpare,” President Duterte said he won’t allow his friendships get in the way of his fight against corruption and campaign to uplift the lives of Filipinos.
In his usual style of speaking impromptu when prepared speeches bored him, Mr. Duterte, at the commissioning of two new Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) ships, said he was friends with several officials in the executive department who had upset him because of their frequent foreign trips.
“Let us be very clear on this,” said Mr. Duterte at the BFAR ship commissioning ceremony. “We are all friends. I don’t have a problem with that. But when it comes to government interest, let us forget our friendship for a moment,” the President said.
Erap’s words
It was a statement that echoed Estrada’s “walang kumpare, walang kaibigan” diatribe against corruption at his inauguration as president at the Luneta Grandstand in 1998.
Barely halfway into his term, however, the promise lost its value after the former actor was ousted for shady deals cooked up by his friends that allegedly gave him billions of pesos in kickbacks.
Mr. Duterte said he lost his temper after learning that some officials, including some of his personal choices for government posts, were inaccessible because they were always out on foreign trips.
He said officials “mostly in Manila are dead wood.” “People would go to their office to seek their signatures but then they’re not there,” he said. “The client would come back the next day and they’re still not there because they’re abroad,” said the President.
The President said travels taken for the flimsiest of reasons was a form of corruption, too.
Hidden motives
Without naming names, Mr. Duterte said he would not flinch in firing officials, even if it involved someone who contributed greatly to his presidential campaign.
He said many people had been egging him to run for president in 2016 only to end up being corrupt, too, after he appointed them to government positions.
Some of these people, he said, were the ones who tried to persuade him to run in order to end corruption.
“Look at the irony of it all, very tragic. You pushed me to run because you said you wanted corruption to end,” the President said.
He said if corruption remains unchecked, “the danger there is it would make things worse for us.”
“In my time, I would never allow it,” Mr. Duterte said.