Duterte Quotes

We cannot move forward if we allow the past to pull us back.

No matter the source, most follow the same flow: They describe the drug and corruption problems, Duterte’s solution, and the mounting body count. Few include the victims’ full names. Most suggest that these killings are crimes against humanity, including a note about the international community’s condemnation—but inaction.

What is Build, Build, Build? It is a revolution of Filipinos who want the next generation to see a better Philippines.

Putin was a new modern “strongman,” Peskov said, an archetype who was spawning imitations across the globe. “People around the world are tired of leaders that are all similar to each other. There’s a demand in the world for special sovereign leaders, for decisive ones who do not fit into general frameworks,” the Kremlin spokesman explained. “Putin’s Russia was the starting point.” Others that fit the mold included Viktor Orban in Hungary, Xi Jinping in China, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and Recep Tayyip Erdog˘an in Turkey.

Filipinos have built many cities, expressways, subways, railways, and airports elsewhere in the world as OFWs. The pandemic gave us the best talent pool one could ever ask for. Build, Build, Build gave OFWs an opportunity to serve their country if they wanted to. Although we couldn’t match the salaries they received abroad, many stayed to ensure that Filipinos would get to use infrastructure that they only saw in photos before. We are on the right track. The Philippines can be a trillion-dollar economy. President Rodrigo Duterte already laid the grounds to make this possible. It will be up to us to make it happen.

Our critics were correct — it would have been impossible for us to implement Build, Build, Build alone. We knew it from the start. If not for the help of the 6.5 million Filipinos who willingly took part of the shared vision of creating a more comfortable life for all, big ticket projects would remain in the pipeline.

After Jun ran away from home, he started living on the streets. At some point he started using.” I stare hard at my untouched cup of tea. A lump forms in my throat. “Overdose?” Mom shakes her head. I look up. “Then what?” “He . . .” She trails off and looks around again as if to make sure Dad isn’t within earshot. Then her eyes land on mine and soften. “He was shot.” She pauses. “By the police.” “The police?” She nods. “Why would the police shoot him for using drugs?” She takes another deep breath. “Duterte.

Jay, it’s easy for us to pass judgment. But we don’t live there anymore, so we can’t grasp the extent to which drugs have affected the country. According to what I’ve read, most Filipinos believe it’s for the greater good. Harsh but necessary. To them, Duterte is someone finally willing to do what it takes to set things right.

It is easier to build from scratch than to dismantle the rotten and rebuild upon its rubbles.

If Trump insists that judges are biased and calls the American criminal system a “laughingstock,” what is to stop an autocratic leader like Duterte of the Philippines from discrediting his own judiciary?

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Recently, Filipino politics kinda looks a lot like the United States,” he continued, rolling his eyes and gesturing with his hands. “You’ve got a president who was Trump before Trump was Trump, and you have relationships with people close to him with SCL and Cambridge Analytica. And you had a lot of data being collected—the second largest amount of data after the United States being collected in the Philippines. Also if you look at how SCL and Cambridge Analytica operated in a lot of countries . . . one of the things they talk about is that they use . . . they don’t go into a country as Cambridge Analytica. They don’t go into a country as SCL Group because it’s too obvious. So you use local partners—” “Proxies,” I clarified. “You use proxies,” he continued. “. . . They’re on camera admitting this. They go into countries, set up bullshit companies that are just fronts and they send in staff. It makes it very difficult for regulators or opposition parties to actually identify what’s happening. And as they also have admitted, once an election is done, they just get out. So they’re in. They’re out. They’ve got their guy in, and then you know they can come back and ask for favors.” “Okay,” I interrupted, “Alexander Nix [the Cambridge Analytica president] came to the Philippines at the end of 2015 before the campaigns began, and there was a photo of him—”13 “Yeah, he met with people there,” said Chris. “—the staff of Duterte,” I finished. “Yeah! What do you think he was doing there?” Chris asked.14

In 2016, when we started Build, Build, Build, critics said that the EDSA Decongestion Program is mathematically impossible, that it could not be done, that President Rodrigo Duterte was overpromising, and that Google Maps did not support such assertion. They failed to see the bigger picture — the possibility of a 90-year-old EDSA back to its original 1930s form, a future where Filipinos do not have to debate about Metro Manila’s “true midpoint” and a reality wherein every city in Metro Manila can be accessed within a 20 to 30 minute time frame

As early as 2016, when the Duterte administration launched the Build, Build, Build program, Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Secretary Mark Villar instituted key reforms in the right-of-way processes, including the issuance of an administrative order creating Right-of-Way Task Forces for each of the projects being implemented. He also decentralized the ROW acquisition functions and delegated the duties and responsibilities to various implementing units. Prior to this, regional offices were not capacitated with their own right-of-way divisions and were dependent only on legal support provided by the Central Office.

Critics of the administration recently pointed out that over 180,000 families will be displaced in Metro Manila should the NLEX-SLEX Connector Road Project and the North-South Commuter Railway (NSCR) Project push through. This claim is fictitious, inaccurate, and misleading. For example, based on the census and tagging conducted by the National Housing Authority, the government agency mandated to relocate and resettle Informal Settler Families (ISFs) affected by the construction of national infrastructure projects, the estimated number of likely affected ISFs in the NLEX – SLEX Connector Road Project is only 1,700.

In 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte embarked to build the Luzon Spine Expressway Network, a 1,101-kilometer expressway network, which would connect the northernmost and southernmost parts of Luzon. By building a 655-kilometer expressway network, Department of Public Works and Highways Secretary Mark Villar aims to complement the existing expressway grid spanning 385 kilometers. The goal is to increase the road network by threefold.

As a student, I dreamed of a nation without roadblocks. I didn’t realize that 10 years after, I’d be part of President Rodrigo Duterte’s Build, Build, Build team. And since July 2016, according to Secretary Mark Villar, DPWH has completed 29,264 kilometers of roads, and 5,950 bridges.

Several years after Typhoon Yolanda struck the Philippines, international development organizations remained to help in the recovery and rehabilitation process. In my mind, it was difficult to talk about sustainable development when students had to risk their lives just to go to school, when farmers and fishers had to take whatever the middlemen were willing to give because transportation of their produce proved too difficult. A number of municipalities could only be accessed through boats. Whenever it rained, families would have to make a decision whether to risk their lives or lose their income. It was at this point that I realized that if we were to achieve real and inclusive economic growth, then a good infrastructure network was necessary. I would have never thought that in a matter of years I would join President Rodrigo Duterte's Build, Build, Build team.

Prior to the term of President Rodrigo Duterte, average infrastructure spending for the past five decades was only at 2.5 percent of the country’s GDP. The 2015 IMF report found that the Philippines had a lower public investment in comparison to other members of ASEAN. We all know that Build, Build, Build is a program that is not only necessary but is in fact long overdue. If the Philippines is to achieve its full potential, then it must do something to cut losses due to traffic congestion in Metro Manila, which has gone up to ₱3.5 billion a day. It was at this point that Secretary Mark Villar presented the plan to decongest the 90-year-old EDSA, a 23.8-kilometer circumferential highway, which has long exceeded its maximum capacity of 288,000 vehicles a day.

To effectively usher in the Golden Age of Infrastructure, the Duterte Administration created Build, Build, Build, a medium-term development strategy, which aimed to mobilize the largest work force in Philippine history to implement an infrastructure plan consistent with the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity.

The EDSA Decongestion Program, which is composed of 23 projects amounting to over ₱383 billion is well underway. Secretary Villar is confident that President Duterte’s promise of decongesting EDSA will be delivered before the end of his term. Five years after, major road and bridge projects have already been completed including the NLEX Harbor Link Segment 10, the Radial Road 10 Exit Ramp, the Mindanao Avenue Extension Segment 2C, the Metro Manila Skyway Stage 3, the Fort Bonifacio-Nichols Road (Lawton Avenue) Widening, the Estrella - Pantaleon Bridge and the Bonifacio Global City-Ortigas Center Link Road Project, among others.

Dead is a good word for a journalist in the age of Duterte. Dead doesn’t negotiate, requires little verification. Dead is a sure thing, has bones, skin, and flesh, can be touched and seen and photographed and blurred for broadcast. Dead, whether it’s 44 or 58 or 27,000 or 1, is dead.

It was easy, one village captain told me, to identify a drug addict. It was "the aura" that gave it away. "I can tell from the eyes.

President Duterte said kill the addicts, and the addicts died. He said kill the mayors, and the mayors died. He said kill the lawyers, and the lawyers died. Sometimes the dead weren’t drug dealers or corrupt mayors or human rights lawyers. Sometimes they were children, but they were killed anyway, and the president said they were collateral damage.

President Duterte said kill the addicts, and the addicts died. He said kill the mayors, and the mayors died. He said kill the lawyers, and the lawyers died.

Nanlaban, under Rodrigo Duterte, did not mean only that a man had fought back. It meant he had fought and died. Nanlaban is judgment and justification, verb and noun, a shorthand for the dead bastards who deserved what they got.

Here is Jason Quizon’s confession, his act of contrition. He was conned and allowed himself to be conned. He is disappointed, not in Duterte, but in himself. Jason regrets his vote. He regrets the fact that maybe ten more people voted for Duterte because he told them to vote for Duterte. For Jason, Rodrigo Duterte is a liar and “the most cowardly person to ever hold that position.” When Jason Quizon voted again, he did not vote for the Duterte daughter, or the Marcos son. He is still disappointed, not only in himself, but in his people too. When it comes to elections, he says, Filipinos are still fucking morons.

There was dissent in the aftermath. There was an opposition. There were lawyers and priests and activists, but for those of us documenting Duterte’s war, the protests were no more than a whisper in a hurricane.

Makalipas ang ilang taon matapos nanalasa ang Bagyong Yolanda sa Pilipinas, patuloy pa rin ang pagtulong ng mga international development organizations sa rehabilitasyon. Sa isip ko, mahirap pag-usapan ang tungkol sa sustainable development kung ang mga mag-aaral ay kailangan ipagsapalaran ang kanilang buhay makapunta lang sa paaralan; kung ang mga magsasaka at mangingisda ay napipilitang kunin kung anuman ang inaalok na presyo ng ahente dahil ang paghahatid ng kanilang ani at huli ay napakahirap. Ang ilang mga bayan ay napupuntahan lamang gamit ang mga bangka. Kapag umuulan, kailangang mamili ng mga pamilya kung ipagsasapalaran ang kanilang buhay o mawala ang kanilang kita. Sa puntong iyon ko napagtanto na kung nais natin makamit ang inclusive growth, kinakailangan ang isang mahusay na infrastructure network. Hindi ko akalain na matapos lang ang ilang taon ay sasali ako sa Build, Build, Build ni Pangulong Rodrigo Duterte.” - Night Owl: Edisyong Filipino (p. 10, Bakit ko Sinusuportahan ang Build, Build, Build?)

The final installment was published on May 2, seven days before the elections. It ended with a warning: “If Rodrigo Duterte wins,” we wrote, “his dictatorship will not be thrust upon us. It will be one we will have chosen for ourselves. Every progressive step society has made has been diminished by his presence. Duterte’s contempt for human rights, due process, and equal protection is legitimized by the applause at the end of every speech. We write this as a warning. The streets will run red if Rodrigo Duterte keeps his promise. Take him at his word—and know you could be next.

The law might be optional, the thugs might be at the helm, but Duterte was a man who said what he meant and meant what he said, who might give you a warning and then count one, two, three.

Pen en Francia, Morawiecki en Polonia, Orbán en Hungría, Erdogán en Turquía, Duterte en Filipinas y Bolsonaro en Brasil. Aunque sean distintos, tales personajes comparten el mismo desprecio por la democracia (Orbán hablaba orgullosamente de las virtudes de las democracias iliberales), con su imperio del derecho, la prensa libre y una judicatura independiente. Todos creen en «líderes fuertes» —en ellos mismos—, un culto a la personalidad que ha pasado de moda en buena parte del mundo restante.

A pessimistic orientation does not seek accommodations with the system. We share the goal of the undercommons, which “is not to end the troubles but to end the world that created those particular troubles as the ones that must be opposed” (Halberstam 2013, 9). Moten and Harney don’t play the liberal game of reform; they are constantly reframing the problems at hand. What questions we ask are crucial—for bad questions yield worse answers, ones that compound the problem. On prison abolition, their intervention is decisive and reconfigures the coordinates of the debate: for them, it is “not so much the abolition of prisons but the abolition of a society that could have prisons, that could have slavery” (Moten and Harney 2013, 42). How do you abolish a society? How do you fight state power? Is anti-statism, ethical (that is, nonviolent) anarchism, the only solution? Is it a solution? Or do you dare to seize power, as with the example of Morales? A universal politics takes these questions to heart. For this reason, its skeptical negativity is put into the service of a more virtuous end: locating antagonisms, rather than settling for conflicts or pseudo-struggles. Its challenge is to sustain the antagonistic logic of class struggle, and avoid the comfort of static oppositions. The cultural Left has its enemies (Trump, Putin, Le Pen, Erdoğan, Modi, Duterte, Netanyahu, Orbán, Bolsonaro, Suu Kyi, MBS, etc.)—and, conversely, notorious leaders blame liberal media, demonizing bad press with the “enemy of the people” charge—but nothing really changes; the basic features or coordinates of the current society remain the same. Worse, the liberal capitalist system is legitimized (only in a free democracy can you, as a citizen, criticize tyrants abroad and, more importantly, express your outrage at the president, politicians, or state power without the fear of retribution) and the cultural Left is tacitly compensated for playing by the rules—for practicing non-antagonistic politics, for forgoing class insurgency and not engaging in class war (Žižek 2020f)—rewarded with “libidinal profit” (Žižek 1997b, 47), with what Lacan calls a “surplus-enjoyment” (2007, 147), an enjoyment-in-sacrifice. That is to say, cultural leftists, with their “Beautiful Souls” intact, enjoy not being a racist, a misogynist, a transphobe, an ableist, and so on. Hating the haters, the morally repulsive, the fascists of the world, is indeed an endless source of libidinal satisfaction for “woke” liberals. But what changes does it actually produce?

Critics have said that the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte should shy away from Build, Build, Build if it were to solve the COVID-19 pandemic. I disagree. The government must not choose between health and economy but rather make mutual compromises that would further health, recovery, job security, and long-term economic potential.