Now that more and more persons with credibility (among them Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV during the vice-presidential debate and much earlier former senator and now senatorial candidate Panfilo “Ping” Lacson) are questioning the sanity of his claim that he can rid the country of criminals, drug dealers and corrupt officials in three to six months, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte is backtracking.
A Rappler report said in his rally in Taguig last Monday, Duterte’s line was, “Hindi ko talaga ma i-stop as in stop. For as long as there is society, and there are men and women and children in a society, there will always be crime.”
In his rally in Cainta the next day, he used another term: “Synonym ng suppression is stopping. Hindi ko talaga mai-stop as in stop.For as long as there is society, and there are men and women and children in a society there will always be crime. When I say ‘suppression,’ it’s really ‘stopping’.”
But he immediately reverted to the line that appealed to a deeply frustrated public.