In his address before congress yesterday, Duterte repeated his worn out rhetoric against “the oligarchy” in an effort to bamboozle the people and obscure the fact the he is now the country’s biggest oligarch, or more precisely, tyrant, who rules through sheer violence and terror.

He devoted a significant amount of time denouncing the business operations of Manny Pangilinan and the Ayalas and, whom he now refers to as oligarchs. Duterte is now using the same “anti-oligarchy” rhetoric which he used to denounced the Lopezes to justify his scheme to shut down ABS-CBN in an attempt to force them out of business.

Duterte’s scheme in shutting down ABS-CBN will further unravel in the coming months. Whether they will be pressured to sell their property and business to reported Chinese-supported big capitalists, or whether Duterte will order its seizure and taken over by the government on some made up pretext, is something that we will eventually see.

Duterte’s success at shutting down ABS-CBN has emboldened him to pursue his Marcosian scheme to go after their telecommunication, water, electricity and other public utility operations of Pangilinan and the Ayalas.

It turns out that the apologies he expressed to them last May were not sincere, and that he failed to coax them to “talk” to forge some “reasonable” settlement of the “issues” being raised against them. Duterte has now resumed openly issuing threats of going after them. He is demagogically using the people’s frustration over telecommunication services to justify his threat of seizing Smart and Globe operations.

Duterte’s corruption knows no bounds. His voracity stems from his need for hundreds of billions of pesos to repay his election supporters, satisfy his cronies and business cohorts, and fund his campaign to perpetuate himself in power. His appetite is proving insatiable.