Are Duterte’s outbursts needed?

While the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is out with a broom, sweeping his house clean, I do not understand why a neighbour or an external person should have any concern unless the dust he is sweeping is falling on the neighbour’s property. The US’s involvement in other nations’ affairs is something that we read about almost every day, and I still have not found an answer to who has given them the fatherly stature to look after the affairs of other nations.

The very fact that the US wants to have a word with Duterte on nonjudicial killings happening in the Philippines in the wake of an anti-drug movement is the wrong start to a dialogue, as it obviously conveys a message to Duterte that someone who is not living in the Philippines is raising a dialogue. How would you like it if someone interfered with the way you discipline your children? Would anyone like an external person interfering in your attempt to bring peace in your own home?

Human rights activists in the world, like the United Nations (UN) can have a say in the killings that are taking place in the Philippines, but those dialogues need to be diplomatically addressed, as one cannot do anything if there is no compassion.

When the leader of a nation speaks, he needs to maintain some modicum of decorum while addressing anyone. Any sort of expletive insults are uncalled for and it demeans the person’s own personality and image. Duterte needs to understand this. In his expletive statements, the focus of the world moves to semantics, away from the objective of bringing love, peace and an enhanced perception of life in the country.

The angst that Duterte feels for his countrymen is something none will be able to comprehend to the degree of depth that he feels. He is the only one on the world stage who lives there and understands issues in their entirety. From whatever I have read, this is the first time someone has been speaking up and taking a country that is infested with crime to a higher level of peace and happiness.

Allow him to function and give him time to clean up the dirt. If human rights activists are so keen on their objectives of human rights, then where were they when the crime situation in the Philippines was at a high percentage and innocent people were being killed daily? It’s only when someone becomes tough on such miscreants that all the voices of human rights and hegemonic nations in the UN leave their domestic dirt aside and come to clean up someone else’s home.

- The reader is an engineer based in Abu Dhabi.