Rodrigo Duterte, the ever-controversial president of the Philippines, rolled out a novel plan for reducing his military budget on Wednesday: he offered to pay a $500 bounty for every Communist insurgent killed.
“You kill an NPA today and I’ll pay you 25,000 pesos,” he said, referring to the guerrilla fighters of the New People’s Army.
Duterte explained this approach would be much cheaper than drafting a proper military budget for ongoing operations against the insurgents. “If I just pay 25,000 for a life, I can save about 47 percent,” he estimated.
As with most of Duterte’s most headline-grabbing comments, the bounty idea was not entirely serious, although it can sometimes be difficult to tell when he is joking. He spent a good deal of his speech at an airbase mocking the rebels as easy to kill, to the evident amusement of the crowd.
AAN Staff
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