Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was declared as the “Person of the Year for 2017” according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an organization that has for six years recognized the individual who has done the most in the world to advance organized criminal activity and corruption.
OCCRP said that the Philippine leader edged out two African strongmen for the title – South African President Jacob Zuma and ousted Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, this year’s runners-up.
Zuma and Mugabe created division, hostility, and resentment by undermining the rule of law, according to Khadija Sharife, a member of the judging panel.
“The global panel of nine corruption-fighting journalists, scholars and activists chose Duterte on the strength of his brutal war on drugs,” OCCRP said.
OCCRP editor Drew Sullivan, also one of the nine judges who selected the Person of the Year, said that “Duterte has made a mockery of rule of law in his country.”
“While he is not your typical corrupt leader, he has empowered corruption in an innovative way. His death squads have allegedly focused on criminals but, in fact, are less discriminating,” Sulivan said.
It cited Duterte’s comparison of Hitler’s massacre of millions of Jews to his bid to “slaughter” 3 million drug addicts in the Philippines, a comment that drew flak.
Duterte had often said that there are an estimated 3.7 million drug addicts in the Philippines, but the Dangerous Drugs Board has placed the number at 1.8 million.
In fact, the Duterte administration, was criticized at home and abroad for the deaths in the drug war, yet has denied that the killings are state-sanctioned.
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