Duterte vents anger at UN

Rodrigo Duterte

MANILA: Philippine president-elect Rodrigo Duterte has launched a profanity-laced tirade against the United Nations while criticizing it for being too weak to fix problems in the Middle East and Africa.
In a seemingly unprovoked attack on the UN at a Thursday night press conference, Duterte vented his anger in response to a question about foreign media groups that were critical of him.
“That’s the trouble here, they’re always raising fears about this or that UN convention,” Duterte said, even though the journalists’ criticism had not been linked to UN protocols.
“(UN) can’t even solve the Middle East carnage... couldn’t even lift a finger in Africa... shut up all of you.”
Duterte, 71, had been incensed by the criticism of foreign and local media groups to his comments earlier in the week that corrupt journalists were legitimate targets of assassination.
Explaining his stance on corrupt journalists, Duterte said on Tuesday that one murdered reporter who was a vocal critic of his who deserved to die.
Duterte refused to apologize on Thursday. The Philippines is one of the most dangerous nations in the world for journalists, with 174 murdered since a chaotic and corruption-plagued democracy replaced the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos three decades ago.
The UN has made no recent criticism of Duterte, who has been mayor of the southern city of Davao for most of the past two decades and will be sworn into office on June 30.

Police win first kill bounties

A Philippine politician said he had given more than $3,000 to police officers for killing drug traffickers, the first such rewards since Duterte promoted bounties for slain criminals.
Tomas Osmena, mayor-elect of Cebu, the nation’s second-biggest city, offered similar rewards and announced on his Facebook page recently he had paid out 155,000 pesos ($3,300) to police who killed three men he said were drug traffickers.
Osmena posted a series of comments celebrating the deaths of the three men, as he lashed out at the Commission on Human Rights, a constitutionally mandated body, for investigating the circumstances of the May 28 killings.
“CHR = Criminals. Have. Rights. (Even more than the real victims),” Osmena wrote.
Osmena described one of the slain suspects, Rowen Secretaria, as one of Cebu’s biggest drug dealers. Osmena did not return calls from AFP requesting comment, and in a previous interview refused to disclose where the money for the bounties would come from.
Osmena and Duterte, like all winners in the national elections, will not take office until June 30.