Duterte government a 'letdown' : Ramos

In rare criticism of Duterte, 88-year-old former president Fidel Ramos said the government was “losing badly” by prioritising a controversial war on drugs at the expense of issues like poverty, living costs, foreign investment and jobs.

Duterte’s spokesman, Ernesto Abella, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Duterte picked Ramos, in office from 1992-1998, as his special envoy to break the ice with China and manage the fallout from an international arbitration ruling Manila won in July that dented Beijing’s claims to jurisdiction over most of the South China Sea.

Duterte has spoken often of his respect for Ramos who he said had persuaded him to run in the May election.

It was no clear why Ramos made his criticism at this time and he was not available for comment.

Ramos is only president to score higher than Duterte in a Philippine opinion poll traditionally conducted after the first 90 days of each presidency.

Duterte was rated “very good”, with a net satisfaction rating of 64 per cent in a Social Weather Stations Poll on Thursday, behind Ramos at 66 per cent. Only 11 per cent of 1,200people polled were not satisfied with Duterte.

In a Sunday editorial in the Manila Bulletin newspaper, much of it written in capital letters, Ramos listed priority focus areas that could have been “do-able” if Duterte had hit the ground running “instead of being stuck in endless controversies about extrajudicial killings of drug suspects and in his ability at using cuss-words and insults instead of civilised language”.

The drugs crackdown, Duterte’s signature policy popular among Filipinos who elected him in May by a huge margin, has killed more than 3,600 people since June 30, with 1,377 shot by police in operations. Activists believe the rest were mostly vigilante killings.

In a separate poll on Friday, 84 per cent of Filipinos supported the crackdown although most felt it important to arrest suspects alive.
- REUTERS