Andanar said the government’s all-out war against drugs conducted by the law enforcement is a “war for national survival”.
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The new sidearm is meant to fight the terrorist and illegal drug syndicate.
Duterte has repeatedly said conflict was pointless and he wants to get along and do business with Beijing.
The decision also rejected Beijing’s claim to nearly the entirety of the strategic waterway and said that it violates the Philippines’ right to explore resources within its exclusive economic zone.
President Duterte replied to the European Union request by saying, “I read the condemnation of the European Union against me”.
Yet, the Philippines’ newly minted leader, who has opted for bilateral negotiations with China, made it nearly impossible for the United States and its allies to rally global pressure on China, at least in the meantime.
In his visit at the Police Regional Office in Tambler in General Santos City on Friday, the President said the foreign individuals and groups criticizing his war against illegal drugs apparently could not understand him. “I will have the command conference with the police, just a reminder for them also that I’m not happy with what has happened”, he said. The EU issued a statement asking President Duterte to end the killings and to bring his nation’s policy into line with global human rights laws.
President Duterte gave assurance to the soldiers that “there will be an inclusive government with the left but there will not be a coalition government”. But in keeping with the time-honored principle of the right to be heard, after they interpellate me, I would then interpellate them.
In affirming the Philippines’ BBB sovereign debt rating Wednesday, S&P Global bolstered the case that shockingly blunt President Rodrigo Duterte is standing on firm ground. It does not help that Duterte has supported a hero’s burial for Marcos, needlessly reopening a raw wound in Philippine politics. Most recently, Duterte has upped the ante by even threatening the expulsion of American Special Forces from the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. The US “pivot to Asia” is a thinly disguised ruse to preserve its hegemony and to encircle both countries with an extensive and expanding ring of military bases that includes the Philippines as practically one huge US military base.
On the security side, his commitment to resolving twin insurgencies involving Muslim rebels and communists offers Manila another chance to tackle internal problems that have plagued it for decades. He has also said he wants USA forces out of the country’s south, where he said minority Muslims resent the presence of American troops.
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In a statement, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman said this plan reeks of being a “vestige” of martial law, one of the country’s darkest periods when dictator Ferdinand Marcos suspended the writ of habeas corpus, resulting in numerous human rights violations and enforced disappearances.
