President Rodrigo Duterte, who marks his 74th milestone today nearly three years to the day he took the presidential oath of office, has given himself a passing rate after spending three years in his term leading the government.
Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo told a news briefing the President would likely spend his birthday celebration in a simple party in his home city of Davao.
In a speech during the campaign rally of the ruling PDP-Laban party in Koronadal City, South Cotabato, the President gave himself a fair assessment.
“I will be through in three years. For me, I am, if I rate myself now, about five or six,” Duterte said.
The President also recalled the promise he made during the presidential campaign in 2016, vowing to eradicate illegal drugs, criminality, and corruption.
“But I remember I said if elected president, and I emphasized this during the presidential debates that I will deal with corruption and I will deal with law and order, particularly crimes,” he said.
“That was the main course all over the country. Crimes generated by shabu use,” he added.
As part of his so-called “campaign promises,” the President maintained his administration’s crackdown on drugs and the fight against criminality and terrorism would continue in the remainder of his presidency.
“Even if you give a president—you can amend the Constitution—we are not qualified. But if you give a term of even five, even seven terms, six years each, you would still have no progress and development in the Philippines. Believe me. That’s what I can leave you with,” Duterte said.
“You know why? It’s very hard to really develop [the country] if there’s no law and order. If there’s no law and order and everything [and] everybody is in a quandary. What would they do? And I think [we are] being swallowed by the biggest threat of them all and that is the drug problem which is worldwide,” he added.
While admitting last weekend that drug situation in the country had worsened, the President renewed his threat to stop drug traffickers and proliferators, vowing not to let them destroy the country.
“Do not destroy the young and feed them with drugs to no end because I will really kill you,” he said.
Duterte, the 16th President, assumed the presidency on June 30, 2016.
Having a character of being a populist and nationalist, Duterte won the 2016 presidential elections with 16,601,997 votes, winning against four other presidential candidates.
In a separate statement to honor the President’s birthday, Panelo, wishing the Chief Executive well, said the presidency had not changed the President’s simple lifestyle.
“We pray the Almighty to continue (sic) giving him a sound mind and a healthy body, that he may finish the goals he had set for the betterment of the country and people that he loved so well towards a future of progress and prosperity,” Panelo said.
“We are certainly blessed and privileged to have someone as dedicated as President Duterte as the captain of our ship steering our flag carrier safely to a land [where] he vowed to free from drugs and crimes where each Filipino will enjoy a comfortable life,” he said.
For Panelo, as the President approaches the midpoint of his term, Duterte has made good of his campaign promises, relentlessly and tirelessly performing his constitutional duty to serve and protect the people,” he added.
Panelo then recognized the President’s key policies such as his crackdown on illegal drugs, the sacking of corrupt and errant government officials, providing free college education, free universal healthcare and medicine, free irrigation to farmers, and free feeding program for undernourished school children.
The Palace official also acknowledged Duterte’s push to change the social and political landscape by increasing the salary of soldiers, policemen, firemen, and government workers, providing higher pensions for senior citizen and war veterans.
“From a local public servant he had evolved to be a force with national constituency catapulting him to the zenith of political power,” Panelo said.
“His sense of duty and fidelity to the country not only inspires and motivates workers in the government to serve the people well but moves the rest of society to march in cadence with him as he breathes life to the winds of change he has spurred,” he added.
Last year, the President spent his 73rd birthday in his home without any extravagant celebration. He also celebrated his 72nd birthday two years ago “quietly without fanfare.”
Duterte has his roots in the Visayas and Mindanao.
The President was born in Maasin, Southern Leyte. His father, Vicente Duterte, was a Cebuano lawyer who became governor of the undivided Davao in the late 1950s, while his mother, Soledad Duterte, was a school teacher from Cabadbaran, Agusan del Norte and a civic leader of Maranao descent.
The Duterte family moved to Davao when the President was just five years old. Duterte has four siblings: Eleonor, Emmanuel, Benjamin, and Jocelyn.
Duterte has three children with his first wife Elizabeth Zimmerman: Paolo, former Davao City vice mayor; Sara, incumbent Davao City mayor; and Sebastian.
The 25-year marriage of Zimmerman and Duterte, however, was annulled in 1998. The President then had another daughter, Veronica, with his common-law wife Honeylet Avanceña.
Before becoming the country’s highest-ranking official, Duterte studied political science at the Lyceum of the Philippines and graduated in 1968.
Four years after that, he obtained a law degree from San Beda College. He also passed the bar exam in 1972.
Duterte eventually worked as a Special Counsel at the City Prosecution Office in Davao City from 1977 to 1979, Fourth Assistant City Prosecutor from 1979 to 1981, Third Assistant City Prosecutor from 1981 to 1983, and Second Assistant City Prosecutor from 1983 to 1986.
After that, he became the vice mayor and, subsequently, mayor of the city in the wake of the Philippine Revolution of 1986.
He was among the longest-serving mayors in the country, serving seven terms and totaling more than 22 years in public office.
On May 9, 2016, Duterte, having a character of being a populist and nationalist, won the Philippine presidential election with 16,601,997 votes, defeating four other candidates, namely Mar Roxas of the Liberal Party, Senator Grace Poe, former vice president Jejomar Binay of the United Nationalist Alliance, and the late Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago of the People’s Reform Party.
Duterte took his oath as the country’s leader on June 30, 2016, succeeding Benigno Aquino III.
At the age of 71, Duterte became the oldest person ever elected to the presidency.
He is also the first local chief executive to get elected straight to the Office of the President, the second Cebuano to become president after Sergio Osmeña, the third Cebuano-speaking president after Osmeña and Carlos P. Garcia, the first Visayan from Mindanao and the fourth Visayan overall after Osmeña, Manuel Roxas, and Garcia.
Under his administration, some of his notable governmental policies include the mega-infrastructure “Build, Build, Build” program, the controversial war on drugs, the establishment of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao, the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion Law, among others.
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