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Duterte's self-destruct symptoms

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Philippine President's recent remarks on killing should concern his friends and allies

If they haven't yet, President Rodrigo Duterte's friends and allies need to organise an intervention. He has been shooting himself in the foot even more than usual these last several days.

His closest friends should recognise this self-destructive behaviour for what it is: both compelling proof that the messenger is running away from the message and a cry for help.

Mr Duterte's many variations on the theme of giving up are not the cause for concern.

All presidents have spoken of the terminal loneliness of the job; every president since Marcos has said something about how forbidding or fundamentally unfriendly Malacanang is.

Mr Duterte's repeated expressions of regret or wistfulness about running for office and winning the presidency are perhaps more poignant than those of other presidents, but they follow a pattern. They are, in a word, familiar.

It is rather his statements, where he speaks against his own interest, that should concern his allies. This conduct is not normal.

On Tuesday last week, he startled an audience of businessmen with an unprompted admission that when he was mayor of Davao, he used to do some of the killing of criminals himself.

"I know it because - I am not trying to pull (up) my own chair - in Davao, I used to do it personally," said Mr Duterte.

"Just to show to the (policemen) that if I can do it, why can't you?"

He also said: "I go around in Davao (on) a big bike, and I would just patrol the streets and (go) looking for trouble. I was really looking for an encounter to kill."

Mr Duterte has made or hinted at similar admissions before.

When he visited the Inquirer in August 2015, he also spoke about how he took matters into his own hands.

When asked directly whether that meant he had done some of the killing himself, he gave a smooth reply: He was a prosecutor for many years, he said.

He knew his law well enough not to say anything to put himself in legal trouble.

But his remarks at last week's Wallace Business Forum struck the now-characteristic Duterte refrain: an exercise in modesty (I'm not trying to lift my own chair), followed by a show of bravado (I did it personally).

The melody, though, was out of whack: He was bragging about killing.

The following day, he told the BBC: "I killed about three of them… I don't know how many bullets from my gun went inside their bodies. It happened, and I cannot lie about it."

This should strike his friends and allies as even more unnecessary talk.

Was he daring his political critics to try impeaching him?

Impeachment in a Congress ruled by a super majority looks impossible, but even former president Joseph Estrada's equally popular mandate looked impregnable a few months before Edsa II (a four-day protest in 2001 that led to the ouster of his government).

Mr Duterte's admission on Aug 21 that he used to "plant evidence" on suspected criminals so they would turn on each other also seemed like a dare, to try a novel disbarment case against an incumbent lawyer-president.

On Saturday, he made another astounding declaration.

"In the play of politics now, I will set aside the arbitral ruling," referring to the landmark case on China's expansive claims to most of the South China Sea.

Even with his qualifying statement, this seems to amount to an impeachable offence.

"Setting aside" the ruling means abandoning Philippine territory.

His supporters should see these remarks as self-destruct symptoms, not strategy. - Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN

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