The president and his ‘killer’ language

BY tradition and by institutional design, pronouncements by a president are or amount to policy statements. They are received as binding not only on the chief executive and commander-in-chief but also on his or her alter egos and other officials of the administration.

What, then, do we make of President Rodrigo Duterte’s schizophrenic remarks last Monday, when he told one audience “I am not a killer” and then told another that he “used to do it (that is, kill drug suspects) personally”?