The claque of Rodrigo Duterte has a huge problem before them after their god admitted before the Senate blue ribbon committee hearing on Oct. 28, 2024 that he had a seven-member death squad in Davao City charged with cleaning his turf of criminals. It is an admission against self-interest by a man who thinks he owns Davao City and the entire Philippines and who, in a cavalier fashion, will those the Constitution and the Revised Penal Code down the sewers.
With his disclosures, which included tagging retired Philippine National Police (PNP) generals led by Sen. Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa, ex-PNP chiefs Archie Gamboa and Debold Sinas, former generals Vicente Danao Jr., Catalino Cuy and Romeo Caramat Jr. as part of his death squad, Duterte sewed up the case against him. The ex-generals, all with bloody records, denied being Duterte hitmen. His first statement was that his death squad was comprised of “businessmen” and not policemen, later on, to changed his tune to include cops, and backtracked again to say he issued no “shoot-to-kill” orders.
It is time to call in Dr. Natalia Dayan, the court-appointed analyst who disclosed that Duterte suffers from an incurable malignant narcissistic personality disorder that compelled a Pasay City court to annul his marriage to Elizabeth Zimmerman Duterte as Duterte was a womanizer who cannot fulfill his matrimonial duties. Duterte is not acting rationally and continues to dare human rights groups, lawmakers, and the entire Filipino people to charge him criminally. Include in the examination the daughter Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio, who continues to scare her critics with her tasteless TikTok nonsense.
The tragedy of the Philippines is that the electorate elected a lemon like Duterte, whose policy is anchored on murder, for which he is now being held accountable by the families of the 30,000 victims of the “war on drugs,” including men, women, and children killed summarily from 2026 to 2022. Thousands more were killed by his Memorandum Circular 32, which deployed troops to launch military operations in Bicol, Negros Occidental and Oriental and the Samar provinces, and Executive Order No. 70, which institutionalized the “whole-of-nation” counterinsurgency approach crafted by Americans. Both issuances were made in 2018 as Duterte willy-nilly scrapped peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP.)
Duterte challenged the chamber to sue him in his soliloquy before the Senate. Here was a local despot sent to Malacanang by an electorate that succumbed to the stupid messages of Duterte trolls and crones following the guidelines of Cambridge Analytica buttressed by data from Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook. Thus, these voters got addicted to “folie a deux” or shared psychosis. Here was a former prosecutor who lost his cases but maintained he was lily-white for “protecting the Filipino people” from drug-crazed criminals. This mantra should only be good for his very long ears and for the many drug lords that he had failed to arrest and prosecute. Not a single Chinese triad gang member was slain in his “war on drugs.” In fact, drug addiction grew under his watch, including the widespread use of fentanyl.
Only Duterte sycophants and their trucked-in glassy-eyed fanatics would find virtue in the crass oratory of their god. Duterte’s Murder Inc. is a criminal formation and his order for cops to deliberately goad unarmed drug suspects to find is the height of tomfoolery to justify Duterte’s “nanlaban” shtick. Of course, Duterte would deny that there was a reward system for the “war on drugs” all over the country and in his killing fields in Davao City. “Sa sampung sinabi, 11 ang mali,” goes the adage and the saying “ang kriminal ay parang isda na laging nahuhuli sa bunganga” is apropos Duterte’s melodrama at the Senate.
“I have been killing people for a long time, but they have yet to file any case against me,” Duterte said. “Do not question my policies because I offer no apologies, no excuses. The war on illegal drugs is not about killing people. It is about protecting the innocent and the defenseless,” he added, unmindful of the fact that he is not a monarch who has the power of life and death over his subjects. “My job as President was never easy and it was not meant to be. I and I alone take full legal responsibility.” By taking full responsibility, he is egging the Senate to assess the statements of Edgar Matobato, a confessed death squad hitman, and retired policeman Arturo Lascanas, whose detailed testimony before the prosecutors of the International Criminal Court (ICC) corroborated Matobato’s disclosures, as well the confession of retired police Col. Royina Garma about the killings and the Duterte reward system that retired PNP Col. Edilberto Leonardo also affirmed.
In May 2015, Duterte admitted his links to the death squads. “Am I the death squad? True. That is true,” Duterte, who was Davao mayor then, said during his weekly TV program “Gikan sa Masa, Para sa Masa.” In his contorted logic, Duterte argued the admission was meant to dare human rights organizations to go to Davao City and investigate. It means that they, too, can be put on the crosshairs of his hitmen, the way the late Fr. Armando Picardal was hounded out of the city. The priest helped the families of victims to build a case against Duterte. He later retracted that statement, telling reporters there were “no Davao death squads.” Duterte is not only beating around the bush but is attempting to hoodwink the Filipino into believing his crazy statements. Just like the daughter, Sara, who wants her evidence to be gospel truth while the law, the mountain of evidence, and statements by her underlings, the military and the Commission on Audit (COA) prove that she had plundered the money of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd.)
