“You’re cheating government. You are destroying the Filipino people. It won’t happen during my watch,” he added.
Mr. Duterte lamented that the rich were just making themselves richer
and richer, alluding to online gaming operations that continue to grow
in number.
“How am I supposed to protect the younger… how do I collect the right taxes?” he asked.
He warned the rich not to deprive the government of its due.
The government’s interest is paramount, he said.
“It must be the interest, first and last. The first and only interest is government interest, nothing else matters,” he said.
As long as everybody follows the law, follows the rules and do not
cause agony to their fellowmen, “we would have no problem,” the
President also said.
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Just recently, Mr. Duterte vented his ire on oligarchs, a small group of people who wield economic and political power.
He said last week that he wanted to destroy them and their hold on
the country, as they were out to maintain their power and their clutches
on the country’s riches.
The Duterte administration also has an ongoing, bloody war on drugs
that has the President linking over a hundred local officials, judges
and members of the police and military to the illegal trade.
Many of them have denied the allegation and have come out to clear their names.
By contrast, hundreds of other drug suspects, who have no positions
of power, have been killed by vigilantes or in supposed shoot-outs with
police officers.
Mr. Duterte was in Catbalogan to visit yet another military camp to assure troops of his support for them.
During his visit, Mr. Duterte promised the troops medical equipment
and told them that he had ordered the defense secretary to convert the
President’s aircraft into an air ambulance.
He would leave it up to his successor to look for his or her own plane, he said.
The President said he was comfortable with Philippine Airlines and
Cebu Pacific, noting that it has been a long while since any of their
aircraft crashed.
He also said he had been riding a small jet and paying for its gasoline and operational costs.
SOURCE: Inquirer.Net
