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Manila / AFP
Philippine president-elect Rodrigo Duterte takes office this week looking to end the domination of “Imperial Manila” with a radical shift to federalism that he says is vital to fighting poverty and ending a deadly Muslim separatist insurgency.
Duterte, who won last month’s elections in a landslide, has vowed to have the constitution rewritten to achieve his bold plans—which would see power devolved from the central government in the capital to newly created states governing the current 81 provinces.
“It (the current system) is an excuse for them to hang onto power in Imperial Manila. They have always been there in one single office, running the Philippines,” Duterte said in a speech during the election campaign.
Such comments are typical fare for Duterte, an anti-establishment figure who relentlessly rails against the elites who have mostly ruled the Philippines since independence from the United States after World War II.
Duterte will on Thursday take over from Benigno Aquino, who remains a generally popular figure but nevertheless comes from one of the remarkably small number of wealthy clans that have long dominated national politics and overseen one of Asia’s biggest rich-poor divides.
Duterte will become the first president from the vast southern region of Mindanao, which is one of the nation’s poorest areas and home to decades-old communist and Muslim insurgencies that have claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Highlighting his antipathy for Manila rule, Duterte snubbed his proclamation by Congress as the winner of the elections—an event normally rich in tradition and ceremony.
Duterte has also travelled to the capital just once since winning the election, and vowed to spend the bulk of his six years as president based in Davao, which has less than two percent of the nation’s population and is 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) from Manila.
Peace, poverty hopes
Under Duterte’s federal set-up, the states will be largely autonomous and allowed to retain most of their income, rather than remitting it to the central government, which he believes will be a key driver of economic growth in the impoverished countryside.
He has said the central government would retain essential national functions, such as defence, foreign policy and customs.