“The United States offers its sincerest congratulations to the people of the Philippines on the conclusion of the May 9, 2016 general elections, and to the presumptive president-elect Rodrigo Duterte”, Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said in a statement.
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Mr Duterte, who previously served as Mayor of Davao City, has been condemned by human rights groups for his links with death squads responsible for extra-judicial killing of suspected criminals in the 1990s.
Duterte’s message, unpolished and peppered with profanities, tapped into popular alarm over a drug-fuelled jump in crime.
“This liquor ban is because we have to work the next day”, he said. Sonny Coloma, a spokesman for outgoing President Benigno Aquino III, said: “Our people have spoken and their verdict is accepted”. Roughly half of those were serious crimes, and rape cases jumped 120 per cent over this period.
The government will address bottlenecks in Public-Private Partnership projects and set spending on infrastructure at 5 percent of the gross domestic product, Dominguez said.
Washington took the rare step of offering congratulations even though a victor has not been officially declared in Monday’s election, which an unofficial count by an election commission-accredited watchdog showed Duterte easily won. He promises to execute criminals en masse to stop crime in the country and also sobbed in front of his mother’s grave, which apparently showed the humane side of a politician who is often compared to Donald Trump for his straight talking.
“If you are the president of the country, you need to be prim and proper, almost, maging holy na ako (I would become holy)”. “Duterte Harry”, as he is known, denies ordering extrajudicial killings, but he doesn’t condemn them.
Although the United States closed its military bases in the Philippines in 1992, the two nations are bound by a 1951 mutual defense treaty and the former colony is a key element of the US policy of “rebalancing” its foreign policy toward Asia.
The new president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, does not want to waste time with regard to China. Its force is far more stretched across an archipelago than neighbouring Thailand with a 1:302 ratio and Malaysia with 1:267 in the same year. “We don’t expect the same attitude of our officials thereafter”.
“We want to check the bottlenecks, why it is not trickling down”.
Duterte has promised to double police pay, which for some officers is as low as 18,000 Pesos ($390) a month.
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Peter Laviña, spokesperson of the Duterte Transition Team said Leoncio Evasco, Jr., Christopher Go, Carlos Dominguez, Atty Salvador Medialdea and himself are looking into the 421 positions which will be filled by persons who can effectively deliver with the president.
