Duterte warns of ‘rough ride’ as he is sworn in as Philippine president

Defying convention, Rodrigo Duterte took his oath before a small audience inside the Malacanang presidential palace, instead of at a big public rally like previous Filipino leaders.

New Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte takes his oath as Philippines’ 16th president at Malacanang Palace in Manila. The News and Information Bureau, Malacanang Palace via AP

MANILA // Authoritarian firebrand Rodrigo Duterte warned of a “rough ride” after being sworn in as the Philippines’ president on Thursday, promising a relentless war on crime and corruption, but also to be a unifying leader.

Defying convention, Mr Duterte took his oath before a small audience inside the Malacanang presidential palace, instead of at a big public rally like previous Filipino leaders.

“The ride will be rough but come join me just the same,” Mr Duterte said in a short speech, with his opening remarks focused on familiar themes about the need to instil discipline in a graft-infested society.

“The problems that bedevil our country today which need to be addressed with urgency are corruption, both in the high and low echelons in government, criminality in the streets and the rampant sale of illegal drugs in all strata of Philippine society and the breakdown of law and order.”

His anti-crime programme includes plans to reintroduce the death penalty, issuing shoot-to-kill orders to the security services and offering them bounties for the bodies of drug dealers. He has also told ordinary Filipinos to kill suspected criminals.

A lawyer who cut his teeth as long-time mayor of the major southern city of Davao, Mr Duterte, 71, has said another central element of his law-and-order platform is to curb social freedoms with night curfews for children and a ban on alcohol sales after midnight.

The foul-mouthed politician’s style is a sharp departure from that of the laid-back Benigno Aquino.

Mr Duterte won last month’s presidential elections in a landslide after an inflammatory campaign in which he promised that tens of thousands of criminals would die and that fish in Manila Bay would grow fat on bodies dumped there.

His campaign also relentlessly highlighted the alleged failures of Mr Aquino, who delivered the highest rates of economic growth in decades, but failed to stem worsening traffic gridlock, high crime and the widespread poverty endured by many Filipinos.

Even before his term began, Mr Duterte picked fights with the envoys of key allies the United States and Australia over his joke about raping an Australian missionary who was gang-raped and shot dead in a prison riot.

After being elected, his controversial comments that some of the scores of Filipino journalists murdered over the past 30 years had deserved to die earned a rare rebuke from United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Mr Duterte has been accused of links to vigilante death squads in Davao, which rights groups say have killed more than 1,000 people. Such groups are concerned that extrajudicial killings could spread across the Philippines under Mr Duterte.

With the president’s encouragement, police have already killed dozens of suspected criminals since the May 9 election. The incoming mayor of Cebu, the Philippines’ second-biggest city, has also paid out Duterte-style bounties to police for killing drug suspects.

Behind the fireworks of his rhetoric and the war on crime, Mr Duterte has promised a raft of other far-reaching reforms.

Chief among those is to change the centralised government to a federal system in which newly created states would have a large degree of autonomy. Those states would also be able to keep most of their revenues.

But doing so will require rewriting the constitution.

Mr Duterte has also said he can end decades-old Muslim and communist rebellions, which have claimed tens of thousands of lives. Peace talks with the communists are set to start this month. He expects federalism will appease Muslim rebels, who want autonomy.

* Agence France-Presse