(Eagle News) –“Perhaps he likes being called a strongman a bit more than he’s willing to admit.”
Ian Bremmer, TIME magazine columnist and editor-at-large who tagged some popular world leaders including President Rodrigo Duterte as “strongmen,” had this to say about Duterte after the chief executive took offense at the tag.
Bremmer cited a 2018 report from the Human Rights Watch (HRW) which claimed that “(Duterte has) plunged the Philippines into its worst human rights crisis since the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s and 1980s.”
Bremmer added that the President, according to the HRW report, enabled “extrajudicial killings by police and (encouraged) vigilante justice” which allegedly resulted in the killing of thousands, “including children, most of them poor people.”
He claimed that the Duterte administration has “tried to harass and intimidate United Nations officials charged with investigating the evidence” on the alleged killings.
“His government dismisses evidence of his drug war death toll, substantiated by international rights organizations, as “alternative facts,” he alleged.
“As for not sending anyone to jail for criticizing him, Senator Leila de Lima, Duterte’s most forceful critic, has been detained on drug charges that HRW says are “politically motivated,” he claimed.
He also alleged that President Duterte “pushed hard” for the ousting of Maria Lourdes Sereno, whose appointment as Chief Justice was nullified by her peers on Friday, May 11 by a vote of 8-6 in favor of the quo warranto petition.
“Duterte pushed hard for her ousting, calling himself an “enemy” of hers and threatening to forcibly remove her should it come to that,” Bremmer alleged.