President’s Speech During Oath-Taking of Government Appointees

President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s speech during the oath taking of newly appointed government officials held in Malacañang Palace on 15 August 2016.

Magandang hapon po. I said I wanted to just give you a few words. Alam mo, I was elected on just three messages to the people. One, is that there will be a clean government. Second, is I will suppress drugs and control crime.

It has nothing to do with you guys. Take yourselves out of the… itong minsan, magpapasyal-pasyal ako ng probinsiya, endemic talaga ang graft and corruption. I really do not know why other people would insist on doing it until now. Mayroon akong listahan diyan but I want to add some more.

Itong LTFRB, pati LTO all over, they’re still at it and to think that I placed there, si General Galvante and Delgra, he’s a lawyer from Davao, talagang itong mga tao na ito ay with proven competence and integrity. But hindi talaga nila makontrol from a central government down the line doon sa mga regional, eh nandiyan pa rin iyong… ganoon pa rin. I was meeting the businessmen of Cagayan De Oro, was it five nights ago? And the complaint was still there: corruption ng LTFRB, pati LTO. And I suppose that this is true, universal throughout the country except for a minor exception.

I was talking to the NDF panel and we had the discussion about how to shape up a government without necessarily going into the complicated task of coalition because I don’t think it would work. And I said that maybe, what would come out of these talks in Oslo, or that I would insist that I retain the control of the military and the police, and they can have the mundane matters of government.

As a matter of fact, andiyan na sila. But iyong pinag-usapan natin, sabi ko iyong gobyerno, I think there is a need really to purge. I do not want to transgress Civil Service rules, I do not want to ignore due process, which I loathe to do. Pero, apparently itong sa gobyerno mahirap tanggalin iyong nandiyan na, or you need another generation of workers really to do the job. But sabi ko, it has nothing to do with you but I would be very… maybe harsh… double the word, in the coming days because it seems that my appeal, that this would be a clean government is not registering at all in the grey matter between the ears of some people in government.

So I hope that you would help me clean government. Let us just work together, and as I said for those who are working, you have nothing to worry at all. I will be the least of your trouble actually, and I know that you’ve come in with the best of credentials, of competence and honesty. Wala akong problema.

I just want to share with you the perennial problem of the Philippines about corruption. It’s still there, and I still have to show to you the list of the rest of the scalawags in government. More judges, more policemen mainly and some politicians. I have to control the drug problem, because if I do not interdict this problem now in this generation, mahirapan na po within the next… after six years. Kasi kung hinayaan ko ito just like the way it was, more or less ignored na kaya ganito umabot karamihan. It was not until after I became President, and I was also appalled by the number of addicts in this country.

Iyong sumurrender lang, iyong nagpakilala, it’s just about maybe 600,000. But two years ago, PDEA said that there are about 3 million drug addicts in this country. And considering the length of time, there must have been some incremental increase. And if you just place it at a very conservative of… probably 700 na lang, and with the confirmed 600,000 it’s really a pandemic thing. It is not an epidemic, it’s a crisis pestering the country.

I do not want to pull my own chair, magyabang ako sa inyo. I was just thinking that kung hindi ako naging Presidente, and given the contamination of the police into the industry, eh papaano yan, one of the officials di ba, military aide of one candidate. Sabi ko, kawawa talaga itong Pilipinas. And so, I might… lalabas ako dito, medyo kontrabida o with soiled hands, maybe soaked with blood but there is no way to stop it now. There can be no stopping of the momentum until I have destroyed the apparatus.

It’s not the matter of, sabihin mo mahirap lang iyan tapos itong mga… that cannot be the excuse. Simply, I will not accept it because it would add more problems. If you accept the theory na, “ito, bakit si Duterte, iyang mga… “

Hindi ko lang masabi na… hindi ko lang masabi na, ‘ayan mamili ka lang diyan.’ If you are… andiyan yan, and I’m doing everything I can to really get at them. I would not want to elaborate on it because it might ruffle the feathers of some other nations. But alam nila ito. And I had for several times warned their ambassadors, you know, a lot of your citizens are destroying my country. At hindi ko iyan papalusitin kasi sabi ko, ‘simply, if I allow it, there will be no Philippines tomorrow.’

If you have the time, there is a book, Ioan Grillo… Ioan Grillo, online. And there’s a book there about a classic way how a South American countries were destroyed by drugs until now. Kung hindi ko ito pipigilan, because we are sometimes the transshipment and the drugs are being produced in the international waters, and they are dropped there. Lalagyan nila ng GPS, so itong mga operators dito… you know, hinahanap kasi nila sa akin, where’s the big fish? Saan iyong mga bilyonaryo? Well, there ain’t any. Even if I show you now the matrix of the drug problem of the Philippines, you’d have five blangko na frame lang but no faces. But we have the names, or of course, they are only aliases. And they are the ones controlling the flow.

The operation is, there’s a big map there, digital, real time and they can zoom in even sa the smallest barangay. They only have to do is just they direct the operation, you drop it there, get your money there. So ang apparatus dito, iyong lieutenants lang, at iyong mga nasa… unless, I… talagang pipigilan ko itong nasa sidewalk, araw-gabi nandiyan iyan, peddling harap-harapan. Until I shall have destroyed them, we can never, never have peace in our land.

The next worry, of course is terrorism. ISIS, they don’t have any political ideology. They don’t have any concept of what really God is. You maim people, you kill them; and women who refused to have sex with them, they simply burned them. So, we have seen a barbaric practice, and even cutting the throats of other people in front of the world. Hindi ko malaman kung how to meet this kind of… if you do that, you also bring the worst out of me. So bale tabla tayo diyan. Because if you can do it, I can do it ten times better than you, definitely.

Hindi naman ako nag-ano, I’m just warning people na huwag ninyong sobrahan because I would never, never, never allow my country to be destroyed by simply terrorism at itong droga. Hindi talaga ako papayag. As I have said, I put at stake my honor, my life and the presidency itself. If there is a circumstance where I’d be forced out, fine. Wala akong ilusyon diyan of remaining in this, as a matter… even it was not my ambition to be here. I’m still asking myself, bakit ako dumating dito without a political party, without a single barangay captain in Luzon, except maybe in Ilocos. Eh kasi sa Paoay naman, eh you know, taga-doon iyong mga Carpio, my son-in-law is a Carpio from Paoay. Marami rin diyan, so iyong pamilya-pamilya. But in other places, wala ako.

And yet by… help me solve the riddle – six million. Fifty million all in all, six million ang sheer margin ko. How’s it? Hindi naman nila ako kilala. I’m from Mindanao, coming in from the cold. I was not even a… I’m not trying to figure out my life before you, but what I’m trying to say is, what is the debt result of this all of the state. At the end of the day, why should I… what would I say… alam mo, it’s simply one, promise ko, I keep on repeating it: I will give you a clean government, then I will crush the drug problem and criminality. And even if I have to soak my blood, so be it. They have to stop, or else, wala talaga tayong ano.

I am as determined as anybody else who loves his country. Siguro kasi hindi nila… namis-calculate nila ako, I do love my country. We all come from different regions but we talk with different dialects. We are different in ugali, pagkain, lahat, even the idiosyncrasies of the tribe. What keeps us is that thing… my loyalty to my… kaya yang itong iba sila, I said, sabi ko, ‘do not ever commit the mistake of miscalculation.’ Kasi ako, if I go down, I will go down without regrets.

Itong problema natin must stop. Itong corruption, bibirahin ko talaga sila. I will make, not really examples, but bad examples for them before the Filipino people.

I hope you understand my sentiment. Just like you and me, we all crave to have service to our nation.

Maraming salamat po. ●