US reaches out to Duterte

The United States (US) congratulated presumptive president-elect Rodrigo Duterte and said it looked forward to deepening US-Philippines ties with his incoming administration.

Washington took the rare step of offering congratulations even though a winner has not been officially declared in Monday’s election, which an unofficial count by an election commission accredited watchdog showed Duterte easily won.

Duterte was earlier enraged when the ambassadors of the US and Australia criticized his comments

about his rape joke, and even threatened to break ties Washington.

And when he was aked if he would fix ties with the US and Australia on election night, Duterte said he will not mend and it would be up to the two countries to mend their ways.

The United States and the Philippines, which signed a treaty of mutual defense in 1951, are deepening military cooperation in the face of China’s increasingly assertive claims to disputed land features in the South China Sea.

While the United States closed its bases in the Philippines in 1992, it plans to send US troops and equipment there on regular rotations and the two countries have begun joint patrols in the South China Sea as China asserts its territorial claims.

While Duterte has been criticized for allowing a spree of vigilante killings in Davao city, where he has served as mayor for more than two decades, the United States has made clear this week that it plans to work with him.

“The United States offers its sincerest congratulations to the people of the Philippines on the conclusion of the May 9, 2016 general elections, and to the presumptive presidentelect Rodrigo Duterte,” Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said in a statement.

“The United States looks forward to continuing to deepen our bilateral partnership with the new administration as we address common challenges and issues of mutual interest.”

Binay congratulates Duterte

Likewise, United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) standard-bearer Vice President Jejomar Binay has spoken to Duterte to congratulate him on the latter’s impending election victory.

This was confirmed late Thursday night by longtime Binay family spokesman Joey Salgado to reporters who covered the campaign trail.

Aside from sending felicitations to the Mindanaoan leader, Salgado said Binay also wished him well.

“We confirm that Vice President Binay has talked to president-elect Duterte. He extended his congratulations and wished the president-elect all the best,” said Salgado, who served as UNA campaign communications director the past three months.

Cordial, with laughter

“The VP was the one who called up the president-elect around 6:30 p.m. [Thursday]. It was a cordial conversation,” he added.

Binay’s son, former Makati City mayor Jejomar Erwin “Junjun” Binay was present during the conversation. “He describes the talk as light and cordial, filled with laughter which is not surprising considering their ties,” Salgado said.

Transition teams

As this developed, the transition teams of the Aquino administration and that of Duterte are now ready to engage and work for the smooth transition of the government by the end of this month.

This was confirmed by Duterte spokesman Peter Tiu Laviña in a press conference at the Marco Polo Hotel here yesterday.

“Soon we will travel to Manila to meet our counterparts to discuss and effect the smooth transition of power to the next administration,” Laviña pointed out.

Aquino’s transition team is composed of National Economic and Development Authority Director General Emmanuel Esguerra, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, Foreign Secretary Jose Rene Almendras, Public Works and Highways Secretary Rogelio Singson, and Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr.

The transition team of Duterte is composed of national campaign manager Leoncio Evasco Jr., tasked to look at the social services and development; Christopher “Bong” Go, security and peace and order; Carlos Dominguez, economic development; lawyer Salvador Medialdea, the judiciary; lawyer Loreto Ata, governmentowned and -controlled corporations; and Laviña, infrastructure development.

Laviña added that Duterte also gave Go the qualities and guidelines on the appointment of police and military personnel that will be named to sensitive and high positions in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP). These include the merit, seniority, and loyalty to the government, he pointed out.

Cops elated

With a Duterte presidency, the police force now see a bright future for the law enforcement organization.

The police force in Manila is so underfunded that officers say they have to buy their own bullets and it is not uncommon for funeral service cars to give cops a lift along to murder scenes because they have no vehicles of their own.

Enter Duterte, who won this week’s presidential election in the Philippines on a single-issue campaign of crushing crime, corruption, and drug abuse. He has pledged to raise policing standards to the level of Davao, the once-lawless city in southern Mindanao, where he has been mayor for 22 years and the only one in the country that runs its own 911 emergency call service.

Duterte’s message, unpolished and peppered with profanities, tapped into popular alarm over a drug-fueled jump in crime. In 2012, the United Nations said the Philippines had the highest rate of methamphetamine, or “shabu,” use in East Asia. The US State Department said 2.1 percent of Flipinos aged 16 to 64 were using shabu, the main drug threat in the Philippines along with marijuana.

Reported crimes in the Philippines more than doubled from 319,441 cases in 2010, when President Aquino took office, to 675,816 last year, according to national police data. Roughly half of those were serious crimes, and rape cases jumped 120 percent over this period.

Police officials say the figures overstate the problem because reporting of crimes has risen with the introduction of closed-circuit TV cameras in many urban areas and SMS messaging for filing complaints.

Still, Duterte says he intends to be a “dictator” against forces of evil. He told Reuters on the campaign trail five criminals should be killed a week and promised if he became president the fish in Manila Bay would grow fat on the bodies of all the “pushers, hold-up men and do-nothings” dumped there.

Rights group say death squads have operated with impunity in Davao, killing some 1,500 people since 1998. “Duterte Harry,” as he is known, denies ordering extrajudicial killings, but he doesn’t condemn them.

Stretched police force

If the police station Reuters visited this week in the capital, Manila, is any measure, then Duterte has much to fix.

Captain Rommel Anicete, chief of the Manila Police District’s homicide division, told Reuters he and his men have been buying their own bullets since the 1990s.

They split the cost of getting two air-conditioners serviced and, while they do share a couple of ageing computers, they are always short of paper for their printer and have no photocopier.

There aren’t enough police cars to go around and Anicete said one colleague uses a motorbike to do his policing duties, paying for fuel and repairs out of his own pocket.

The Philippines had one police officer for every 651 people in 2012, according to official data. Its force is far more stretched across an archipelago than neighboring Thailand with a 1:302 ratio and Malaysia with 1:267 in the same year.

The government budgeted 188.1 billion ($1.89 billion) for the police this year, up around 13 percent from 2015. A senior police official said it was still too little for the force of about 160,000 officers.

“We lack patrol cars and secure radios,” said the official, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media. “We want to issue a gun for every police officer but those recruited after 2012 will have to wait a bit.”

Like other police officers questioned for this story, he declined to say who he had voted for, but added: “Of course, we like what we have heard so far from him.”

‘Criminals will be afraid’

Duterte has promised to double police pay, which for some officers is as low as 118,000 ($390) a month. Asked on Wednesday how the government will fund this, Duterte spokesman Peter Lavina said: “We will find a way.”

He added that a new detachment to fight drug crime would be set up, and corrupt officers would be fired from the force.

Duterte also wants to set up command centers for security cameras in cities around the country that are modeled on a state-of-the-art crime reporting hub in Davao City.

Roderick Tan, a sergeant in the Manila Police District’s theft and robbery division, said he welcomed Duterte’s assurances that he will shield the police from legal suits and the harassment of criminals or suspects complaining of injuries.

The incoming president has also made it clear that he is no friend of human rights groups and corruption watchdogs that investigate the police’s battles against criminal gangs.

“That should boost police morale,” said Anicete. “I think criminals will be afraid, especially those involved in drugs.”

Another first

After writing history for being the first Mindanaoan to become president, Duterte may also make another first by having himself sworn into office by the lowest elective local executive in the country — the punong barangay.

Camarines Sur Rep. Salvio Fortuno urged Duterte to take his oath of office before a barangay chairman, saying this will make him the first president to do so in Philippine history. (With reports from Ellson A. Quismorio, Ben R. Rosario, and Alexander D. Lopez)