AUTHORITARIAN firebrand Rodrigo Duterte was sworn in as the Philippines’ president on Thursday, after promising a ruthless and deeply controversial war on crime would be the main focus of his six-year term.

Defying convention, Duterte took his oath before a small audience inside the Malacanang presidential palace, instead of at a big public rally like previous Filipino leaders. “No leader however strong can succeed at anything of national importance and significance unless he has the support and cooperation of the people he is tasked to lead,” Duterte said after being sworn in.

His anti-crime programme includes plans to reintroduce the death penalty, issuing shoot-to-kill orders to the security services and offering them bounties for the bodies of drug dealers. He has also told ordinary Filipinos to kill suspected criminals. The foul-mouthed politician’s style is a sharp departure from that of the laid-back Benigno Aquino, the outgoing leader of the Southeast Asian nation of about 100 million people.

Duterte won last month’s presidential elections in a landslide after an inflammatory campaign in which he promised that tens of thousands of criminals would die and that fish in Manila Bay would grow fat on bodies dumped there. With Duterte’s encouragement, police have already killed dozens of suspected criminals since the May 9 election. The incoming mayor of Cebu, the Philippines’ second-biggest city, has also paid out Duterte-style bounties to police for killing drug suspects.

Duterte has also said he can end decades-old Muslim and communist rebellions, which have claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2016