What would happen if society fought violence with violence? Would it reduce crime rates?

No.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is cruel and ruthless. According to his subordinates, during his tenure in Davao City, more than 1,400 people were lynched without trial.

Under Duterte’s iron-fisted rule, major criminal gangs in the Philippines are kept silent, and drug lords would rather pay a high price to have drugs shipped by water than avoid this plague.

You can see the shadows of leaders from various countries in Duterte. He is not a patchwork, but a culmination of various ruling styles.

Next, I would like to give you the honor of introducing:

The soul mate of America’s “King of Understanding”, Gambia’s Jammeh’s fellow statesman, Uganda’s Amin’s successor in domestic affairs, Equatorial Guinea’s Macie’s law enforcement comrade, Chile’s Pinochet’s overseas confidant, Vatican’s Pope’s insulter, Haiti’s Duvalier’s avenger – Philippine President: Rodrigo Duterte.

Rodrigo Duterte

Nanyang Fan Debiao

In 1945, Duterte was born into a political family in Davao del Sur Province, Philippines. As one of the many aristocratic families in the Philippines, Duterte’s father served as the governor of Davao del Sur Province.

The Duterte family (young Duterte is the second from the left), source: http://rappler.com

As a descendant of a prominent family, Duterte does not show any trace of elegance and easy-goingness. His entire life is closely associated with two words – killing.

Duterte had a fulfilling youth. Throughout his student years, he was either fighting or on his way to a fight. He was the main fighter in all the tough fights in Davao province and could be called the Nanyang Fan De Biao.

At the age of 16, Duterte finally completed his mission by stabbing a young man to death during a fight, simply because the other party looked at him more.

After getting the first kill, Duterte was unstoppable. When a classmate at school mocked him for being a country bumpkin, he just raised his hand and shot him.

Due to his straightforward communication style with classmates, the whole school jointly protested and demanded that Duterte be expelled from the school. Later, a big shot guaranteed that he could stay in school.

How did I know about the president’s scandals, such as killing someone at the age of sixteen and shooting a classmate?

Duterte said it himself.

Duterte admitted to killing someone in an interview. Source: BBC News

As a Latin Asian country, the Philippines is a highly free country, so free that killing people is not only not a black history, but is something to brag about.

During Duterte’s presidential campaign, an important part of his talk was about his past history of killings and how he planned to kill people after becoming president. The stories he told about the killings were so vivid and colorful that they were much more exciting than horror movies.

You may be curious after reading this: Does the Philippines have no laws? Why can murder be publicly discussed, but there is no legal punishment?

The law in the Philippines is like the beef prawns on a package of instant noodles—you can’t say it doesn’t exist, but it exists mostly on paper.

How magical is the law enforcement system in the Philippines? Let me tell you a story.

In 2014, under pressure from online reports and public opinion, the Philippine police organized a group of armed special police to raid Bilibid Prison, the largest prison in Manila.

The police raided the prison because they were convinced that it was actually run by the prisoners.

Although they were mentally prepared, the police and reporters were still dumbfounded after entering the prison.

In Bilibid Prison, more than 20 cells have been converted into villas, equipped with jacuzzis, central air conditioning, home theaters, 50-inch LCD TVs, and the entire floor and walls are inlaid with marble.

The prisoners held here can use mobile phones, computers and take drugs without any scruples. The police also found a large number of Rolex, Patek Philippe and Cartier watches, as well as bundles of US dollar cash.

In addition to material construction, the prisoners’ spiritual civilization has not been left behind. They built a striptease room equipped with flashing lights in the prison, and prison guards bring strippers into the prison every week.

In addition to vulgar performances, some prisoners also have artistic pursuits.

The police found a fairly professional recording studio and a small rock stage in the prison because a prisoner named Kronk was a literary young man who had valuable guitars, drums and recording equipment in the prison.

Cronk recorded ten love songs in the studio and uploaded videos of his prison concerts to the Internet. The album sold over 15,000 copies and was voted the best new male singer in the Philippines by the media.

This big shot who released songs in prison was originally a bank robber. When he entered the prison, he brought his own chef, secretary, bodyguard and waiter with him. He even brought his own furniture, including leather sofas and a large conference table. He also had his own armory in the prison.

Whether he has something to do or not, he can leave the prison to do some business, and his killers will also be released from prison to kill people when they receive orders, so he can truly achieve the goal of not affecting both work and imprisonment.

After reading this, do you think it is a comfortable thing to be in jail in the Philippines?

In fact, Bilibid Prison is one of the most overcrowded prisons in the world.

There are 23,000 people held in a prison that can only hold 8,900 people. Except for wealthy drug lords, children of officials and gangsters, ordinary prisoners only have 0.28 square meters of space per person.

Bilibid Prison in 2019. Source: GettyImages

Due to extreme overcrowding, prisoners can only sleep while standing in cells without ventilation systems. The prison is completely controlled by senior prisoners, prison guards rarely enter, and death is as common as eating and drinking.

After reading this, you can probably imagine the deterrent power of the Philippine judicial system.

As a country with a completely dysfunctional judicial system, the only issue with crime in the Philippines is whether or not one can, not whether or not one dares to.

Therefore, Duterte’s bragging about his killing record sounds like a very common thing to Filipinos.

After making a name for himself in middle school, Duterte was successfully admitted to university.

He met a political teacher, Sison, at Lyceum University.

Sison gave a speech at the university. Source: PhilippianCollegian

Although Xi Song is just a teacher, he is not ordinary.

He was a famous communist revolutionary in the Philippines. He was the one who translated Mao’s Selected Works into Filipino. In 1967, he went to Beijing for training and reorganized the Communist Party of the Philippines after returning to his country.

As his student, Duterte naturally received a lot of Marxist-Leninist education. At the same time, he also had a good understanding of Mao’s works, at least he learned the most essential part of Mao’s works – people’s war.

Davao Punk

As one of the more than 200 aristocratic families in the Philippines, the Duterte family’s hereditary territory is Davao City.

In 1986, Duterte took over as mayor of Davao City at the arrangement of his family.

Davao City is located in the southern Philippines and is the third largest city in the Philippines. It covers an area of ​​2,400 square kilometers, which is one-twenty-fifth of Tongliao. However, its population reaches 1.6 million, which is equivalent to a Tiantongyuan and a Huilongguan.

Although Davao City is not very large, it is different from other cities in the Philippines. It is located in the Islamic cultural area of ​​Mindanao Island, which is very different from the Catholic culture of the Philippines and has serious sectarian conflicts.

Moreover, because it is located at a transportation hub, criminal gangs from all over the country gather here, so a bombing or shooting won’t even make the headlines.

By the time Duterte took over as mayor, the public security in Davao City had already saddened Night City and made Gotham City cry.

After Duterte took over, faced with the complex public sentiment and poor public security situation in Davao City, he outlined a main governance idea – killing.

Duterte’s governance philosophy is basically the real-life version of the Weibo judge – sentencing prisoners to death. After all, people are the root of all problems, so if you kill people, the problems will definitely disappear.

Faced with the Philippines’s crappy judicial system and severe public security situation, Duterte believes that instead of wasting time and effort on useless legal procedures, it is better to just shoot and be done with it.

He formed the famous “Davao Death Squad” and carried out a crazy massacre of criminals and gangsters in Davao City. The methods included but were not limited to feeding people to crocodiles, burying them in quarries, and dropping people from helicopters.

He also invented a policy of “double hanging,” in which the body would be hanged a second time after the person was hanged.

During the three decades that Duterte has been in charge of Davao City, if a criminal fell into his hands, it would be a happy ending if he could shoot him.

Duterte extremely despises the nine-to-five work schedule. He sleeps until noon every day, works in the afternoon, and then rides a Harley motorcycle in the evening, carrying an M16 rifle and patrolling the streets. His look is quite punk.

He has imposed a strict late-night curfew and a ban on alcohol and smoking in Davao City.

Every night when he patrolled the streets with his entourage and guns on their backs, the feeling was similar to “Let me see which lucky criminal gets shot by me today.”

Duterte once saw a man smoking in a no-smoking area. He took out a gun and pointed it at the man’s forehead, forcing him to eat his cigarette butt. This is similar to Amin forcing people to eat leather shoes.

Later, according to Duterte’s subordinates, more than 1,400 people were lynched without trial during his tenure in Davao City.

Duterte inspects police rifles in Davao, source: Reuters

Under Duterte’s iron-fisted rule, major criminal gangs in the Philippines are kept silent, and drug lords would rather pay a high price to have drugs shipped by water than avoid this plague.

As a poor city with complicated social conditions, Davao City’s public security was ranked seventh in the world by Lao Du, which is safer than Japan.

However, don’t think that Duterte is a murderer who only knows violence. In fact, he also has a lot of experience in social construction.

During his reign, Davao City became the most foreign-friendly city in the Philippines. A large amount of foreign investment came to Davao City, which greatly developed the economy of Davao City. This also became one of the capitals for his later presidential campaign.

However, while Davao City is thriving, things in the Philippines are getting worse.

Since the fall of Marcos, who ruled the Philippines for 20 years, successive presidents have failed to address nationwide corruption and law and order problems.

Especially under Duterte’s predecessor, Aquino III, the country’s public security and corruption problems had become extremely serious.

In 2010, Aquino III was elected President of the Philippines. Ironically, Aquino III had no talent. In addition to his powerful family background, another major reason for his election was that his mother died.

Mrs. Aquino’s death a few months before the election made people across the Philippines sympathize with Aquino III, which greatly helped his election.

Who would have thought that one day the phrase “your mother is dead” could become an advantage?

After Aquino III took office, corruption and crime problems in the Philippines became increasingly serious, and the crime rate continued to rise. The crime rate in the Philippines in 2014 was 18% higher than in 2013, and in 2015 it was 46% higher than in 2014. The line graph of the crime rate rose more sharply than Maotai.

The luxurious prison we mentioned earlier happened during the Aquino III era. Even in 2015, 44 special police officers in the Philippines were ambushed and killed by drug lords.

This proves that the prestige and capacity of the Philippine judiciary have become unacceptably weak.

Seeing this, Duterte slammed the table and said: Enough! How can I govern the country with these insects? !

In November 2015, Duterte announced that he would run in the presidential election.

The incident immediately caused an uproar in the Philippines, and Duterte left Davao City, which he had ruled for 30 years, and passed the position of mayor to his daughter Sara Duterte.

Duterte’s main campaign point for the presidency is the serious deterioration of the security situation and corruption in the Philippines. Duterte has only one sentence for these criminals:

I really want to kill you right now!

Manila Bay Reclamation Project

When Duterte ran for president, his slogan was: “I will eradicate crime in the Philippines within six months by launching an unprecedented operation to kill all criminals and dump their bodies into Manila Bay to feed the fish so that they will be fattened.”

The word “unprecedented” is very Chuanbao’s style.

In fact, Duterte has always been known as the little wise king of Southeast Asia, and his speaking style makes Trump look so calm.

Duterte told voters:

“Forget about human rights laws. If I’m in the presidential palace, I’ll do what I did when I was mayor. Drug dealers, robbers and deadbeats, they better get out of here or I’ll kill you all!”

That’s a nice thing to say, but why put drug dealers, robbers and deadbeats on the same level?

He also said: “I am standing here tonight. If you want to kill me, come quickly, because if I am elected, I will kill you all!”

This attitude of “only one of me and the drug dealer can survive” was extremely supportive of the Filipino people. Therefore, when the votes were counted in the general election in May 2016, Duterte was elected as the new President of the Philippines with an absolute advantage. At this time, he was only 71 years old and had a promising future.

After his successful election, Duterte expressed his feelings in one sentence – there are so many problems in the Philippines that people can’t help but want to hang themselves.

The Philippines is a Latin American country in Asia. Both its language and culture are very close to Latin America. Moreover, the Philippines is located as a bridgehead in Asia. Drugs from Mexico and Colombia first stop in the Philippines.

The country has convenient transportation and communication, close ties with sources of drugs, and can realize river-sea transport of drugs. It also has abundant labor resources and is a typical “front shop and back factory” model with obvious location advantages.

Therefore, the drug problem in the Philippines has always been extremely serious. According to Duterte, at least three million people out of the 100 million population of the Philippines are drug addicts.

Duterte believes that the anti-drug work should be based on two judgments:

1. The people’s problems must be solved through people’s movements.
2. Where there is trade, there is killing.

Therefore, as soon as Duterte came to power, he immediately issued two policies:

1. The police can execute suspected drug traffickers at any time and anywhere without any legal procedures. Killing a drug lord will earn you a reward of 750,000 RMB, plus medals and promotions.
2. Anyone can shoot down drug dealers and drug users at any time without being held legally responsible, and can get a bounty.

Duterte advocates punishing drug dealers and drug users. Source: Reuters

It has to be said that this “drug dealer elimination plan” is a rather extreme policy. The Philippines entered a battle royale mode almost overnight.

Gunfire rang out on the streets of Manila, and the bodies of drug dealers lay strewn on the streets.

In the first six months of Duterte’s presidency, 6,000 people were killed nationwide. A year after taking office, nearly 20,000 were killed nationwide.

Under this extreme policy, a large group of bounty hunters has emerged in the Philippines, specializing in hunting down drug dealers.

The crackdown on drug trafficking has boosted business for funeral homes across the country, and can be considered as developing the service industry to supplement the retail industry.

Under Lao Du’s battle royale mode, drug dealers in the Philippines were frightened and surrendered one after another.

Five months after Duterte took office, 680,000 people across the Philippines surrendered to the police. The prisons were as packed as sardines in a can. But even so, people continued to surrender. After all, no matter how crowded the Philippine prisons were, it was better than being shot on the street.

But Duterte is well aware that these prisoners who voluntarily surrender themselves are just small fry who are unable to protect themselves.

Those truly powerful drug lords all live a safe and comfortable life under the protection of their families. Previous governments’ anti-drug efforts could only target the lower-level henchmen. I was submissive to the big drug lords, but I showed my martial virtues to the small thugs.

The clan system in the Philippines makes local officials equivalent to military governors, and they have deep roots in the local area and are difficult to uproot.

Therefore, the actions of successive Philippine governments at the local level have been all loud thunder but little rain.

Duterte came up with a brilliant solution to this situation of local separatism: Since the aristocratic families are so powerful and deeply rooted, why don’t I just kill your entire family?

Duterte made a list of powerful families who were in cahoots with drug traffickers and asked them to surrender themselves, especially naming Ozamim Mayor Reinaldo.

The Reinaldo family is a combination of aristocratic families and warlords. They started out as private armed forces in their early years, and later became mayors and openly engaged in drug trafficking.

Duterte asked Reinaldo to surrender, but Reinaldo of course refused and denied it, saying that he had been fighting drug trafficking for many years and refused to cut down the power.

So one day in 2017, the police broke into the mayor’s residence in the name of a search and had a fierce gun battle with the mayor’s family and bodyguards. As a result of the gun battle, the mayor himself, his wife, children, brothers and sisters, a total of eleven people, were all shot dead, basically wiping out the entire family.

The police, acting on the president’s orders, killed the mayor and his entire family. This is a very Latin American thing, and it’s not surprising that it happened in the Philippines, a Latin Asian country.

Duterte’s large-scale anti-drug campaign naturally caused a strong backlash from various powerful forces in the Philippines. He and his confidants were offered high bounties, and there was an endless stream of people who wanted to assassinate them.

In order to ensure his own safety, Duterte made a decision that went against his ancestors.

He did not live in Malacañang, the presidential palace, like previous presidents, saying it was too creepy and he could not sleep there. After he became president, he still regarded Davao City as his base and often flew there.

Duterte’s anti-drug policies in the early days of his administration were widely welcomed by the Filipino people, with his approval rating once reaching 91%.

But the Philippines is different from China. As a small country, what does the international community think of Duterte’s actions?

Obama raised by XX

For the Philippines, the most influential country is definitely its former colonial master, the United States.

Although Duterte’s actions were based on the reality of the Philippines, Obama said: The United States recognizes that drug crime in the Philippines is a big problem, but the right approach should be adopted. Implicit in his words is a condemnation of Duterte’s human rights violations.

Duterte responded to Obama: You are such a son of a bitch.

I’m not exaggerating, these are the original words.

Before the ASEAN meeting, Duterte called out to Obama in his speech:

“The Philippines is not a vassal state of any country. We have long ceased to be a colony of the United States. I have no other masters except the Filipino people… Don’t give me a statement like that, you son of a bitch, or I will scold you during the talks, and then both of us will lose face.”

Duterte’s message to Obama, source: CNN News

As soon as Duterte’s shocking remarks came out, the United States canceled the planned talks with Duterte.

When asked by the media what he thought of Duterte’s speech, Obama responded:

Obama’s response to Duterte, source: Reuters

Look at him, why don’t you say he is the president? People with high EQ say, “Colorful people”, while people with low EQ greet the whole family directly.

But what no one expected was that when Duterte said he would publicly humiliate Obama, he was not just saying it in anger, he really dared to do it.

At the East Asia Summit in September 2016, Duterte delivered a “furious speech.”

Holding a photo of American soldiers killing indigenous Filipinos, he said: “Our ancestors were killed by them, and they come to talk to us about human rights?!”

After Duterte finished his speech, the whole audience fell silent. Obama was sitting in the audience at the time, his face black with anger.

Duterte did this because he saw through the freeloader nature of the Americans. The United States instigated the Philippines to act as a pawn in the South China Sea, but this did not benefit the Philippines in any way.

So after Duterte came to power, Philippine diplomacy took a 180-degree turn, from being extremely pro-American to greeting Obama’s mother, to fully cooperating with China.

Relations between the Philippines and the United States were poor throughout the Obama era.

In addition to greeting Obama’s mother, Duterte also called the US ambassador a sissy and Americans pirates, and their relationship was very strained.

On the contrary, after Trump took office, US-Philippines relations have eased slightly.

Because Trump praised the Philippines for its good anti-drug work, Duterte thought Trump was just like him, with a straightforward personality. He should be the only leader in the world who thinks he is similar to Trump.

Duterte and Trump had a friendly meeting. Source: BBC

If he even dares to scold the President of the United States, there is no one in the world that Duterte dare not scold.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Duterte’s killing of innocent people. Duterte responded: “You are another big fool. The United Nations can’t do anything… If you can point out one bad thing I did, I can point out 10 things you did!”

In addition to criticizing the representatives of the human world, Lao Du also criticized the representatives of the divine world.

Pope Francis visited the Philippines. Duterte was annoyed that too many of Francis’ fans were blocking traffic, so he gave the Pope the nickname “son of bitch” and told him to go back to the Vatican and not visit again.

Duterte is the only leader of a Catholic country who dares to criticize the Pope. In a sense, this can be regarded as revenge for Duvalier. It is true that you cannot write two Dus with one stroke.

However, compared with Duterte’s remarks at home, Duterte’s remarks on diplomacy can be described as restrained.

Former President Aquino compared him to Hitler, a comparison Duterte readily accepted, saying “Germany had Hitler, the Philippines has me.”

When a volcano erupted in the Philippines, he said in the disaster area that he would eat the volcanic ash and then urinate to put out the volcano.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he said he would shoot to death anyone who disobeyed controls and put those who violated curfew in dog cages.

As for things like giving the middle finger and swearing, the frequency of their appearance in Duterte’s speeches is about the same as that of Yu Qian’s father in Guo Degang’s crosstalk. He should be the only president in the world who makes his presidential speeches 18+.

In short, if Duterte were the president of the United States, he would definitely be on more trending searches than Trump.

But such a person can gain a high support rate in the Philippines, so some foreign commentators call this phenomenon the “Duterte Paradox.”

The Duterte Paradox

Do Duterte’s policies violate human rights? Yes, they do.

Extrajudicial executions are totally unacceptable for any modern country as they will lead to a large number of wrongful convictions.

The same is true in the Philippines. Under Duterte’s extreme policies, it is extremely easy to frame someone.

During Duterte’s anti-drug operations, a large number of innocent people who were not drug dealers were beaten to death, which is also the main reason why various countries condemned him.

Can Duterte’s policies solve the Philippines’ problems? No.

After Duterte’s campaign-style governance, the drug problem in the Philippines has indeed improved significantly. The once rampant street drug trade has been forced to go underground, and the overall crime rate has also decreased.

However, such campaign-style governance cannot fundamentally solve the high unemployment rate and income gap problems in the Philippines. It only treats the symptoms and not the root cause, and it is difficult to even cure the symptoms.

So why are the Filipino people still willing to support him?

Duterte is undoubtedly a populist leader, and his practices and style are very similar to those of Venezuela’s Chavez.

But people do not support Duterte just because he talks nonsense. Filipinos can see what he says and does.

Coming from a powerful family in one of the most corrupt countries in Asia, Duterte’s home in Davao City is just an ordinary two-story building.

He once coveted his neighbor’s big TV and asked if he could give it to him if it broke.

When he was mayor, he once disguised himself as a taxi driver to ask citizens about their views on the government, and he often went out alone to drink beer at the night market.

The Filipino people may not understand who Duterte is, but they can at least be sure that he is definitely not the same type of person as Marcos, who hid in the presidential palace and amassed assets worth tens of billions.

Duterte is like a stone that has created ripples in the stagnant Philippine politics.

He could not solve all the problems of the Philippines, but he at least allowed the Filipino people to see another possibility besides the almighty masters.

His political ambitions may be fulfilled by Sara Duterte in the future, or perhaps someone else.

But no matter who he is, if the Philippines can truly succeed in reform one day in the future, Duterte will be recorded as the first person to try it.

Duterte is very old and in poor health. There are often rumors that he has esophageal cancer.

The human body will inevitably perish, but the spirit will exist forever.

Perhaps at the end of Duterte’s story, he will comment on himself:

“I have never cultivated good deeds in my life, I only love to kill and set fires. Suddenly, the golden rope was loosened, and the jade lock was broken. The tide in Manila Bay came, and today I know who I am.”