BACOLOD CITY – If there is something that President Rodrigo Duterte doesn’t care about, it’s survey ratings.

“Ako trabaho lang. Wala akong pakialam dyan sa rating-rating (I just work. I don’t care about ratings),” Duterte said in his speech at the 38th MassKara Festival at the Bacolod Public Plaza Sunday night.

“My rating is finished. I got six million majority over the next opponent (in the 2016 elections),” he said. “Whether I go up or I go down I really do not give a shit,” he said.

“Huwag mo lang lokohin ang Pilipino. Wag mong saktan ang Pilipino, mag engkwentro talaga tayo. ‘Yan ang pangako ko sa’yo (Don’t fool the Filipino people. Don’t hurt Filipinos or we will clash. That is my promise to you),” Duterte said in his speech where he tackled the war on terror, the New People’s Army and illegal drugs.

MARAWI CITY – Soldiers lacked training and equipment for urban warfare which stretched the military campaign to rid the city of Islamic State (IS) followers to five months, according to a key ground commander here.

Col. Romeo Brawner Jr., deputy commander of the military’s Joint Task Group Ranao, said officers had to improvise in terms of deploying troopers, equipment and using tactics to defeat members of homegrown terror groups Abu Sayyaf and Maute, who had tried to establish an IS base in this predominantly Muslim city.

The government had declared the liberation of the city from IS, although fighting continued to finish off what the military now refers to as “stragglers,” or remnants of Abu Sayyaf and Maute, still holed up in the city.

Brawner said that despite the shortcomings in equipment and training, improvisations had led to key accomplishments that included the killing of IS leaders – siblings Abdullah, Madie and Omar Maute and IS Southeast Asia “emir” Isnilon Hapilon of Abu Sayyaf.

900 TERRORISTS DEAD

Terrorist casualty had reached 900 as of Saturday while the government lost 164 policemen and soldiers. At least 1,700 other government forces had been injured, mainly from improvised explosive devices and sniper fire.

“We have learned so many lessons here,” Brawner said. “We never had experience in urban warfare. We were trained on jungle warfare but we did our best,” he said.

A ground commander, who talked on condition of anonymity, said soldiers had expected to fight in forested areas but came to realise that they were to engage in close quarter battles in buildings and tunnels.

“We came to realise that our training was not appropriate,” the commander said.

“We were trained to fight in the jungle and in the mountains. Now here comes this situation where we had to take down enemies amid the maze of buildings dotting narrow streets,” the commander said.

He said that in the initial assault by government forces in an inner part of the city, he had ordered mortars fired but realised that these were not effective.

“We intended to surprise the enemies but we were the ones surprised in the end,” he said.

“The exploding mortar shells barely made a dent on buildings because these had been fortified. Hollow blocks were rarely used in construction of buildings here. Those were made of solid concrete,” the commander added as he pointed to a row of buildings that soldiers had retaken after more than three months of fighting since June.

IMPROVISATION

“In the end, we did it but so much improvisation had been used. I just can’t say what these were,” the commander said.

Brawner said the lessons that the war in the city offered would be eventually part of the military’s training manual.

“We will have to amend our doctrine,” Brawner said. “We have to retrain our soldiers,” he said.

He said he saw urban warfare to be the battle of the future.

Despite the lack of equipment for urban warfare, Brawner said the military had done its job and was proud of it.

Soldiers, he said, “showed determination even with their limited capability to defeat the enemy.”

“We have shown that we were able to adjust,” he said.

Government forces, he added, had to make do with existing equipment. Transport planes for troop deployment, tanks and other weapons that had been products of previous modernization programs helped a lot, he said.

IMPRESSIVE

Lack of transport planes, like C-130s, did not hinder troop deployment, according to Brawner. “We managed to move in as many battalions as we can,” he said. “Maute did not expect we could do it in so short a time,” he added.

Brawner said soldiers made the most out of equipment available to them even if these were not enough.

“Even armies of other countries were impressed because while we lacked equipment, we did the job,” he added.

The military, Brawner said, was also proud of its achievements in terms of dealing with civilians caught in the fighting. “It reinforced our sensitivity,” he said.

Soldiers, he said, had quickly adjusted to the culture of Maranaos.

In the early days of the fighting, the military deployed female soldiers to man checkpoints. Women took charge of inspecting female commuters or motorists as Islamic laws prohibited men from laying their hands on women unless they were married.

“And you saw that we did not commit human rights violations,” Brawner said.

DIFFERENT MARTIAL LAW

“This martial law was very different in the sense that our soldiers really respected civilian rights,” he said. Complaints against soldiers, he added, were immediately acted upon.

Two nongovernment organisations, however, disagreed with Brawner’s narrative. Suara Bangsamoro and Tindeg Ranao said they were still calling for an investigation of rights abuses and an immediate lifting of martial law.

The groups said an independent body should probe the abuses committed during the war.

The government, said Jerome Aba of Suara Bangsamoro, “should be held responsible for the deaths and displacement of Marawi residents and the destruction of their communities.”

Tindeg Ranao said Maranaos continued to suffer in evacuation camps.

Brawner said accusations of human rights violations against soldiers had to be validated. The destruction of structures was part of war, he added.

“In general, I can say that we did a great job of protecting our country from terror here,” he said.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling bloc scored a big win in Sunday’s election, bolstering his chance of becoming the nation’s longest-serving premier and re-energizing his push to revise the pacifist constitution.

Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party-led (LDP) coalition won a combined 312 seats, keeping its two thirds “super majority” in the 465-member lower house, local media said.

A hefty win raises the likelihood that Abe, who took office in December 2012, will secure a third three-year term as LDP leader next September and go on to become Japan’s longest-serving premier. It also means his “Abenomics” growth strategy centred on the hyper-easy monetary policy will likely continue.

Final official results from the election, which coincided with an approaching typhoon, are expected early on Monday. The US-drafted constitution’s Article 9, if taken literally, bans the maintenance of armed forces. But Japanese governments have interpreted it to allow a military exclusively for self-defence.

Backers of Abe’s proposal to clarify the military’s ambiguous status say it would codify the status quo. Critics fear it would allow an expanded role overseas for the military. Abe said he would not stick to a target he had floated of making the changes by 2020. “First, I want to deepen debate and have as many people as possible agree,” he told a TV broadcaster. “We should put priority on that.”

The LDP’s junior partner, the Komeito, is cautious about changing the constitution, drawn up after Japan’s defeat in World War Two. Several opposition parties favour changes, but do not necessarily agree on details.

REFERENDUMS RISKY

Amendments must be approved by two-thirds of each chamber of parliament and then by a majority in a public referendum.

“Now that pro-constitutional change parties occupy more than two-thirds of the parliament, the constitution will be the most important political issue next year,” said Hidenori Suezawa, a financial market and fiscal analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities. “And as we saw in the UK … a referendum could be tricky. So while Abe is likely to be prime minister for the time being, it is too early to say whether he can stay in power until 2021.”

Abe declined to say if he would run for a third term.

Abe had said he needed a new mandate to tackle a “national crisis” from North Korea’s missile and nuclear threats and a fast-aging population, and to approve his idea of diverting revenue from a planned sales tax hike to education and child care from public debt repayment

He called the poll amid confusion in the opposition camp and an uptick in his ratings, dented earlier in the year by scandals over suspected cronyism and a perception he had grown arrogant after nearly five years in office.

Abe has backed President Donald Trump’s tough stance towards North Korea, which has test-fired missiles over Japan, that all options, including military action, are on the table. Trump is to visit Japan Nov. 5-7 to reaffirm the leaders’ tight ties.

ABE’S GAMBLE PAYS OFF

Abe’s snap poll gamble had seemed risky – some early forecasts saw the LDP losing a significant chunk of seats – after Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, often floated as possibly Japan’s first female premier, launched her conservative Party of Hope.

That party absorbed a big chunk of the failed main opposition Democratic Party, which abruptly decided to run no candidates of its own. But voter enthusiasm soon waned despite its calls for popular policies such as an exit from nuclear power and a freeze on the planned sales tax rise.

Koike did not run for a lower house seat herself – she was in Paris for a climate change event on Sunday – and failed to say whom her party would back for prime minister.

“We had sought to put policies first. But we ended up with a very tough outcome, so I deeply apologise for that,” Koike told NHK.

A new Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ), formed by liberal former DP members, got 54 seats, beating the 49 seats of Koike’s party to become the biggest opposition group, although both have just a fraction of the LDP’s presence.

“Day by day, we felt we were getting more voter support for our call to revive more decent politics, and not fret about whether it’s right or left wing,” said CDPJ lawmaker Tetsuro Fukuyama.

Several experts noted the ruling bloc’s win was less a victory for the conservative, long-ruling LDP than a defeat for a divided opposition. “Simply put, this was the self-destruction of the opposition,” said Zentaro Kamei, a senior research fellow at think tank PHP Institute and former LDP lawmaker.

Shinjiro Koizumi, the LDP lawmaker son of popular former Premier Junichiro Koizumi, warned against LDP complacency. “It’s not just that our party has become arrogant and complacent. People are also getting increasingly fed up with us,” he told NHK.

Abe, 63, has already led the LDP and its partner, the Komeito, to four landslide wins since he took the helm of the party. But turnout has been low and the LDP has typically won with about 25 per cent of eligible votes. Others either stayed home or backed opposition parties. Kyodo news agency estimated turnout on Sunday – when heavy rain from powerful Typhoon Lan lashed much of Japan – at 53.7 per cent, 1 point above the record low in the last lower house election in 2014.

TOKYO – A rapidly weakening typhoon Lan made landfall in Japan on Monday (Oct 23), setting off landslides and flooding but leaving the capital Tokyo largely unscathed, although at least two people were reported killed and train and plane services disrupted.

It had weakened to a category 2 storm when it made landfall early on Monday, sideswiping Tokyo, after it had powered north for days as an intense category 4 storm, according to the Tropical Storm Risk monitoring site. Lan is the Marshall islands word for “storm”.

At least two people were killed, one a man in his 60s who was passing a building site when scaffolding collapsed on top of him and the other a fisherman tending to his boat, Kyodo news agency said.

Nearly 90 others suffered injuries, most of them minor, media reported.

Another man was missing after a landslide engulfed his home, NHK public television said, although his wife was dug out by rescuers.

Rivers burst their banks in several parts of Japan and fishing boats were tossed up on land. A container ship was stranded after being swept onto a harbour wall but all 19 crew members escaped injury.

The centre of the storm was north-east of Tokyo on Monday morning and it was moving north-east at 65 kmh, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. It is expected to move out into the Pacific later on Monday and become a tropical depression on Tuesday.

Around 350 flights were cancelled and train services disrupted over a wide area, although most commuter trains were running smoothly in Tokyo.

Tens of thousands of people were advised to evacuate, and several thousand ordered to move, on Sunday as the storm approached, lashing a wide swath of Japan with torrential rain and wind. Those numbers had fallen sharply by Monday morning.

Toyota Motor Corp cancelled the first shift at all of its assembly plants and said that it would decide on a later shift around noon on Monday.