Duterte: I will bring you down

Public judgment: A protester holding a prop bearing Duterte’s face and others calling the Philippine leader guilty of crimes against humanity during a protest ahead of the president’s last annual State of the Nation Address in Quezon City. — Reuters

President Rodrigo Duterte unabashedly renewed his threat to kill drug dealers in his final State of the Nation speech.

Duterte, 76, who won a six-year presidential term in 2016, is winding down his often-tumultuous presidency amid a raging pandemic, a battered economy and a legacy overshadowed by his deadly campaign against illegal drugs that has set off complaints of mass murder before the International Criminal Court (ICC).

While many expected him to focus on ways to combat the coronavirus, which has devastated the economy and worsened hunger and poverty, Duterte instead devoted most of a rambling, nearly three-hour televised speech to non-pandemic topics he has addressed repeatedly in the past.