{"id":172804,"date":"2018-07-24T01:45:10","date_gmt":"2018-07-24T05:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=172804"},"modified":"2018-07-24T01:45:10","modified_gmt":"2018-07-24T05:45:10","slug":"drug-war-relentless-duterte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/07\/24\/drug-war-relentless-duterte\/","title":{"rendered":"Drug war to be ‘relentless’: Duterte"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cLet me begin by putting it bluntly: the war against illegal drugs is far from over. Where before, the war resulted in the seizure of illegal drugs worth millions of pesos, today, they run [into] billions in peso value,\u201d Duterte said at the Batasan Pambansa Complex in the House of Representatives. NI\u00d1AL JR.\/PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO<\/figcaption><\/figure>MANILA<\/strong>\u00a0— \u201cThe war against illegal drugs is far from over.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Rodrigo R. Duterte began his third and shortest State of the Nation Address (SONA), vowing that his administration’s drug war will be \u201cas relentless and chilling\u201d as it was the day it began.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me begin by putting it bluntly: the war against illegal drugs is far from over. Where before, the war resulted in the seizure of illegal drugs worth millions of pesos, today, they run [into] billions in peso value,\u201d Duterte said at the Batasan Pambansa Complex in the House of Representatives.<\/p>\n

Duterte said he could only \u201cshudder\u201d at the harm that illegal drugs have caused Filipinos throughout the country, noting that this was the very reason why the drug war will not be set aside.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead, it will be as relentless and chilling, if you will, as on the day it began,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said drug dealers know the consequences of their criminal acts but still resisted arrest. At the same time, he also hit human rights advocates and church leaders for criticizing his drug war.<\/p>\n

Despite protests against the drug war, Duterte said it could not dissuade him from continuing his fight against shabu, cocaine, cannabis, heroine, and other illegal drugs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you think that I can be dissuaded from continuing this fight because of [your] demonstrations, your protests, which I find, by the way, misdirected, then you got it all wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour concern is human rights, mine is human lives. You worry about the present; I am concerned [about] both the present and the future. I worry about the future because I know what crimes can do to the youth of this country. If not stopped, crimes can make human cesspools of succeeding generations. I will not allow it to happen. Not during my term,\u201d Duterte said.<\/p>\n

Duterte renewed his vow to end corruption within government describing it as \u201ca leech that it bleeds the government of funds programmed for its infrastructure and other social development projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

The President acknowledged that he dismissed several government officials including friends and political supporters, adding that although he valued friendships, \u201cit has its limits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, he urged officials to cut red-tape within their agencies and make government services \u201ctruly customer friendly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur people deserve efficient, effective, and responsive government services. They deserve nothing less,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Duterte\u2019s third SONA was delivered in 48 minutes. The President\u2019s first SONA lasted for 90 minutes while his second SONA lasted for 120 minutes.<\/p>\n

His third SONA was delayed for over an hour due to a change in speakership in the House of Representatives where former president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo replaced Davao del Norte Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA\u00a0— \u201cThe war against illegal drugs is far from over.\u201d President Rodrigo R. Duterte began his third and shortest State …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":172671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,16,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news","category-news-ph","mauthors-azer-parrocha","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}