Rodrigo Duterte, the mayor of southern Davao city, secured more than 14.4 million votes, according to a count of 87 percent of precincts nationwide from Monday’s elections.
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“It took us five hours to get from the hotel to the airport”.
A victory by Duterte would amount to a massive political shift in the Philippines. Rodrigo Duterte, who has been mayor of Davao for 22 years and worked as a congressman, has always been the wild card in Filipino politics.
On the last day of campaigning Saturday, he made clear he intends to continue his hard-line approach. I wanted to call him: ‘Pope, son of a whore, go home. “Because… I’d kill you”, he warned.
Nearly 90 percent of the Philippines’ population is Roman Catholic, but Duterte says that while he was raised in the faith, he no longer practices it. He has threatened to dismiss the Philippine Congress and form a revolutionary government if he is confronted with uncooperative legislators.
Philippines’ incoming president Rodrigo Duterte has vowed to crack down on crime, punish corrupt policemen with death and repeated that he will enforce a liquor ban and night curfew.
“I’d like to reach my hand to my opponents”.
“Duterte is a strong-willed leader with outstanding track record in Davao, and he can address the now bad peace and order situation, huge rich-poor gap and rural development and infrastructure needs”, said columnist Wilson Lee Flores.
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There are four other candidates vying for the presidency.
“Human rights groups have accused Duterte of permitting or encouraging death squads to conduct extrajudicial killings of hundreds of perceived petty criminals”. Filipinos have been hypersensitive to potential threats to democracy since they ousted the elder Marcos. About 18,000 local official positions also were up for grabs.
About 55 million Filipinos registered to vote at 36,000 polling places across the archipelago of more than 7,100 islands, including in a small fishing village in a Philippine-occupied island in the disputed South China Sea.
Constitutional change has been a discussion in the Philippines for nearly two decades, explained Rood.
A proud womanizer, Duterte has said he has “two wives and two girlfriends”. The other candidates stuck to less audacious reforms. -Philippine security alliance. He has anxious members of the armed forces by saying that communist rebels could play a role in his government.
HARI SREENIVASAN: On foreign policy, Duterte has said he’d talk to China about its expanding claims and military activity in the South China Sea.
It is hard to nail down the details of Duterte’s policies, as his campaign was so heavily focused on law and order issues, but he has also vowed to change the constitution to moving away from centralised government to a federal system.
Analysts predicted that a Duterte win would weaken the Philippine peso, given his uncertain economic platform.
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“Well that is his style in Davao, in every election”.
