The president of the Philippines issued a brutal warning Monday to government officials with connections to the drug trade.
President Rodrigo Duterte said that the mayors on his final list of officials involved in the domestic narcotics trade have two choices: resign or die.
“I will call the mayors, I will lock them in so it’s just us. I will really tell them, ‘The list I gave you is this thick. Look for your name there, mayor. If your name is there, son of a bitch, you have a problem, I will really kill you,” Duterte said Monday.
“I might go down in history as the butcher,” he added. “It’s up to you.”
Duterte promised to strip dirty officials of their powers and remove their security details, leaving them vulnerable and unprotected.
A huge list identifying around 10,000 police, military personnel, and government officials with links to the domestic drug trade was presented to the National Security Council and Congress late last year. Duterte said that the list was so “thick,” he would “run out of time and bullets” before he got through the whole thing.
Duterte has demonstrated he is as determined to clean up the government as he is to clean up the streets. “If you are corrupt, I will fetch you with a helicopter, and I will throw you out on the way to Manila,” Duterte explained in December. “I have done it before, why should I not do it again?”
The president has promised to remove drugs, as well as drug pushers and users, from the Philippines.
Shortly after taking office as president last summer, Duterte launched a brutal shoot-to-kill war on drugs that has already claimed the lives of an estimated 6,000 people.
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