MANILA — Only the Yellows want President Duterte out of government, even as the Reds or the Leftists are now on his side.

That’s according to President Duterte himself as he exuded confidence on Wednesday night when he talked about the political opposition against him.

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Mr. Duterte said the Yellows, in apparent reference to the Liberal Party members who had used the color for their campaign, have been the only ones taking to the streets against him because they could not bear the thought they lost to him in the May elections.

“The Yellows there, you’re holding demonstrations. You want me out because you cannot accept defeat,” he said in a speech in Malacañang at a state conference on the UN Convention Against Corruption.

He said the left-leaning groups were not involved in such activities.

“The ones you call the Left, they would never even allow me to step down two steps to the ground. The communists, the NPA, they are all for Duterte,” he said.

This was politics, he said.

“They wanted me out. I said, of course, the Vice President. You had your chance,” he said.

Vice President Leni Robredo is a member of the Liberal Party.

Duterte again lambasted the critics of his bloody war on drugs for their fixation on human rights above peace, security and law and order in the country.

The President said it would be impossible to rehabilitate all drug addicts, who usually ended up being drug pushers themselves, because the government simply did not have the funds to provide rehabilitation facilities for three million addicts. He joked: Where do you want me to put them? At Sofitel?

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He also reiterated his stand not to publicly condemn the members of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in Eastern Visayas who have been charged with multiple murder for killing detained Albuera, Leyte Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr., a drug trafficking suspect, and another inmate in an alleged shootout. The National Bureau of Investigation has declared Espinosa’s killing as a rubout.

President Duterte stressed he would not interfere in the NBI case against the CIDG Region 8 members. Go ahead, file a case, he said, but added he still believed the CIDG 8 version of a shootout. He said he would never dump them before the public as he had instructed all policemen to do their jobs of interdicting drug traffickers and not to hesitate to return fire if suspects were actively resisting them and if the law enforcers’ lives were in danger. SFM

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