Like Job, President Rodrigo Duterte believes that God gives and takes away. Now, if God wants to finish his entire six-year term, his opponents better tuck themselves because this man can never be moved.
In a speech in Batanes province on Friday, Mr. Duterte talked
extensively about how improbable his victory was in May’s presidential
election—no financial resources and a national political machinery—and,
after 100 days in office, he said, “I tend to believe now, that it was
God who gave it to me.”
And since he became President due to divine intervention, Mr. Duterte
said it was easy for him to brush aside rumors of his imminent exit,
either through impeachment or coup d’etat or assassination by the
Central Intelligence Agency.
“Don’t scare me, you people from Manila with your plan to hold a
rally next year and remove me from office. Because if I go, that is part
of my destiny. That is what it is so don’t come out in newspapers
warning Dutere about a coup d’etat or others,” he said.
“If I become President for just two months or two years, that is part
of my destiny, what God gave me. So I just let them threaten me with
launching a coup d’etat or people power, these sons of a…,” he said.
“But if I reach six years, you’re all dead,” he added.
As God was his main backer, Mr. Duterte said he owed nothing to
anybody, even the “rich” kingmakers who refused to contribute to his
campaign until they were sure of his victory.
But by that time, Mr. Duterte said it was too late and he rejected their contributions.
He said he was not new to these kinds of intrigue in office, starting
with his more than two decades as Davao City mayor during which time
allegations of his ties to liquidation squads hounded him.
According to the President, he got through the worst of what his political rivals, the
“yellow,” threw at him in the elections, especially when they realized
that he wasn’t going down in the polls before Election Day.
He said this was the time when “garbage” like the death squad
allegations and Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV’s exposé on billions of pesos
allegedly stashed in his undisclosed bank accounts started to come out.
“If I had that much money, you won’t even see me here. At my age of 71, I’d rather travel anywhere,” he said.
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