President Duterte takes pride in his being smart in matters of geopolitics. After all, as he more than once told his captive audience, he is a graduate of Foreign Service at the Lyceum University.
Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque announced last week that President Duterte’s State of the Nation address on July 23 will follow a new format where he will be talking to the people on matters close to his heart.
China builds a monument on Kagitingan Reef that the Philippines claims as part of its territory in South China Sea and President Duterte announces he will sail to Benham Rise, an underwater plateau east of Luzon that has been declared part of the country’s extended continental shelf, to show the world that he is willing to die for a land mass that is not even part of Philippine territory.
President Duterte’s incessant rants against Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda of the International Criminal Court betray how deeply the communication submitted by lawyer Jude Sabio, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and Rep. Gary Alejano (Magdalo Partylist) has stung him.
I watched again the speech of Emma Gonzalez and my mind is filled with scenes close to home. I think of the survivors of President Duterte’s brutal anti-drug war.
If Pres. Duterte thinks he is now out of the reach of the International Criminal Court because he directed the Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea to withdraw the ratification of the Philippines of the Rome Statute which established the ICC, he is mistaken.
At the start of his administration, President Duterte said there were three million drug addicts in the Philippines which was the reason why he launched a brutal campaign against illegal drugs which has now claimed over 4,000 as of March 2017 per data from the Philippine National Police.
In the Philippines, where women have long proven their worth, they are still subjected to a lot of disrespect. And this is from no less than the President himself.
President Rodrigo Duterte is more than willing to personally argue his case before the International Criminal Court (ICC), Malacanang said, as the tribunal opens an initial probe to determine if there’s a need to investigate mass murder allegations filed against him.
When then presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte dismissed as “garbage” the exposé of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV during last two weeks of the election campaign abouthis bank deposits with the Bank of Philippine Islands, Julia Vargas branch, he thought probably that was the end of it.
