Rodrigo Duterte is the biggest threat to the Filipino people’s survival and their democratic life.

In the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, Duterte has proved himself incompetent and insensitive to the plight of the people, a demagogue who has not only failed to manage the pandemic, but also devastated the economy and caused widespread impoverishment of the people.

The Covid-19 pandemic will continue to spread in the country and threaten the lives of millions of people because of Duterte’s corruption and priority for debt-driven infrastructure projects, failure to allocate enough funds to raise the capacity of the health system and obsession with perpetuating itself in power through military-oriented solutions and with the anti-terror bill.

Duterte incessantly denounces the New People’s Army as “terrorists” in order justify the large waste of money in corruption-ridden military purchase of helicopters, bombs and missiles, distract the AFP with counterinsurgency, draw the support of the US State Department, and prevent coup efforts from gaining ground.

For close to four years now, Duterte has repeatedly proved it is he that is the country’s biggest terrorist. He has used the AFP and the entire state machinery to unleash wanton terror against the people in the form of mass killings in his fake drug war, massacres, extrajudicial killing of activists, aerial and artillery bombardment in the vicinity of rural communities. He has abused the law by slapping criminal charges against his critics and the political opposition, carrying out mass arrests of people under martial law conditions and other acts to terrorize the people.

As a matter of survival and defense of fundamental rights, it is imperative that the Filipino people unite and put an end to Duterte’s tyrannical rule.