Duterte is like Dirty Harry come to life

“Go ahead, punk. Make my day.” This popular catchphrase comes from the 1983 film “Sudden Impact.”
 

The actual line is “Go ahead, make my day,” and is a line by the main character, “Dirty Harry” Callahan (played by Clint Eastwood), who aims a gun in a robber’s face and dares him to kill the waitress he is holding hostage.

 

So when Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, frustrated by the rampant rice smuggling occurring in his jurisdiction, threatened the evildoers with extreme sanction, it was like seeing Callahan come to life.

 

“I want smuggling of rice in my city stopped. But if you still do not stop your smuggling activities, I will kill you,” he said last week.

 

To some, that declaration made him sound like an arrogant vigilante who considers Davao his personal property, swaggering about with his guns and goons to enforce his idea of the law. "Time Magazine" called this man “The Punisher” in a 2002 article.

 

Yet Duterte has also managed to dramatically decrease the crime rate and make Davao City one of the most peaceful and law-abiding cities in the country.

 

His threat to kill rice smugglers earned him warnings from the Palace and from the Commission on Human Rights (CHR).

 

In a radio interview, Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. said (in Tagalog), “All government officials, whether in the national or local government, need to respect due process of the law because we are a government of laws, not of men.”

 

CHR chairman Etta Rosales chided Duterte for being unethical and for “conduct unbecoming a public official,” reminding him that his role is “to ensure good governance and not kill people,” as a newspaper report phrased it.

 

Duterte, however, later clarified his statement, saying, “If still you refuse to stop smuggling rice into my city, then I will go to where you are and check on your warehouse using my visitorial rights. I will check on your electricity consumption, your books with the Bureau of Internal Revenue, and business license and everything.”

 

For some, a visit from the tax man is a more terrifying prospect than a visit from the Grim Reaper.

 

In a later radio interview, Duterte, commenting on criticisms of his remarks, retorted, “Can you point out to me [what] law [says] that I cannot threaten criminals? Shut up!” The mayor is a lawyer, who graduated from San Beda College’s law school in 1972 and passed the bar the same year.

 

Stung, the CHR says it will retaliate – by sending the mayor a formal letter that will point out to him that “there is something alarming and wrong with his statement,” according to another news source.

 

The mayor, unfazed by the prospect of receiving such a letter, stands by his words. “What ethics are you talking about? Go tell that to the smugglers. Tell the smugglers they are unethical for causing the government to lose billions in taxes,” he said last week.

 

Not only does Duterte have a passion for enforcing the law in Davao, he also has a talent for turning a witty phrase while doing so. In response to appeals for him raise the 30km per hour city speed limit he imposed to the national 40km per hour minimum in urbanized areas, he said, “It is the law and I do not care if you consider it slow motion.”

 

A news report on December 22 said that since the mayor’s executive order reducing the speed limit was enforced on October 29, the number of traffic accidents has gone down by 10 percent.

 

It took an act of God to render Duterte (almost) speechless. After visiting Tacloban two days after typhoon Haiyan struck on November 8 he told reporters, choking back tears, “I do not mean to be. . .God must have been somewhere else or he forgot that there is a planet called Earth.”

 

However, unlike other prominent officials who wandered about dazed or spent their time complaining and blaming others for their inefficiency, Duterte sprang into immediate action.

 

On November 10, he sent a medical team of 20 doctors, 20 nurses, and 40 relief workers to assist in search-and-rescue operations. He brought P7 million in cash to donate to Tacloban and Leyte. He also borrowed three helicopters from private volunteers. Duterte issued a grim warning to looters who would attempt to block the convoy: that they would be shot in the foot by police and military personnel. 

 

He is also said to have repeatedly warned criminals attempting to operate in Davao City that they will either “leave vertically [upright and of their own volition] or horizontally [carried out in coffins].”
 

This is why a kidnap victim in Manila chose to find a way to get to Davao City where she believed she would best be helped. 

 

Sally Chua was abducted in Quezon City in July 5, last year. She convinced her captors to take a road trip with her to Davao City where she would withdraw the P15 million ransom money from a bank there.

 

Duterte responded by coming to the scene with sundry law enforcers who blocked off the street. An ensuing shootout resulted in the killing of three kidnappers and the rescue of the victim.
 

The mayor is so serious about keeping his city crime-free and its citizens safe that the city has spent P128 million on its “Intelligent Operations Center” which boasts state-of-the-art monitoring and tracking equipment.

 

These include gadgets for “multi-channel unified communication” as well as video analytics software, global positioning system (GPS) tracking equipment, and hundreds of CCTV cameras “all over the city, even in the far-flung barangays.”

 

The cameras are said to be so sensitive that they can “zoom in enough to identify even nameplates of soldiers or police sleeping in their posts.”

 

That’s way better than what NAIA Terminal 3 has, which is nothing, the reason why there was no CCTV footage of the Mayor Talumpa slaying there last December.

 

“Dirty Harry” Callahan was an anti-hero who did not hesitate to resort to barely legal means to protect and avenge the innocent and promote the greater good in the face of an inept bureaucracy.

 

As “Duterte Harry,” the mayor’s methods may sound like rumblings of mayhem and murder, but he is getting results, the reason for his constituency consistently voting him and his family into office over the past couple of decades.

 

He’s willing to go to jail, he says, if he kills any rice smugglers, in order to protect the interests of the Filipino farmer. What’s clear is that while he’s on the right side of the law, he’ll continue to do and say what he sees fit to enact his own idea of justice, to make Davao into the safe haven of his vision. Short of actually offing someone (or committing some other chargeable offense), he’s there to stay.

 

So go ahead, punks, make Mayor Duterte’s day. — KDM, GMA News