This is Davao City’s secret to being named the world’s 9th safest city, according to Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.
“To make the city safe, this has always been my unwavering stance against criminals,” he said.
“You rape a child in my city? Papatayin kita, walang problema sa akin iyan (I’ll kill you, I don’t have any problem with that),” Duterte told over 200 delegates during the first national convention of the Workplace Advocates on Safety in the Philippines Inc.
Duterte tells criminals: Leave Davao City vertically or horizontally
“You commit robbery with rape? Papatayin kita (I’ll kill you),” he said.
“We’re the 9th safest city, how do you think did I do it? How did I reach that title among the world’s safest cities?” he asked. “Kill ‘em all,” he said, as his audience gasped and applauded.
Davao city was recently tagged as the world’s 9th safest city by the crowd-sourcing site www.numbeo.com.
Duterte said even former President and now Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, despite her perceived faults, had sought him out as peace and order adviser during her term to replicate the best practices of Davao City. He recounted telling Mrs. Arroyo that sparing no criminal would help. “But the best practices in the city, Ma’am, are the killings,” Duterte recounted saying to Arroyo.
He said he did not care if the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) filed cases against him in court if it sees problems in the way criminals are being dealt with in Davao City.
“Why should I be afraid to go to prison?” he asked. He asked the delegates, mostly safety officers of big corporations and owners of companies, to choose the best bet for President in 2016 but added he does not covet the position.
He also said that the suspension of the death penalty has only emboldened criminals.
“When you start to be soft in this country and allow Western thoughts to sip in, that’s when you start to have problem,” he said, referring to the death penalty and the concept of rehabilitation for criminals as ideas “imported” from the West. “They want to rehabilitate instead of just killing the idiots,” he said. – by Germelina Lacorte