Heading off the multi-headed monster

To safer ground: Residents taking their belongings as they ride on a wooden boat to a safer place in the village of Napo, Inabanga town, Bolo province after security personnel clashed with the Abu Sayyaf group on the popular resort island. — AFP

JUST give me vinegar and salt and I will eat their liver. Thus declared President Duterte in his usual profanity-laced Cebuano patois during the opening of the Palarong Pambansa (national games) on April 23.

He was visibly exasperated, angered even, by the resilience of the problem posed by the bandit group Abu Sayyaf. Expectedly, he again raised the spectre of declaring martial law in Mindanao.