Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte won martial law powers across the southern third of the country for one more year on Wednesday to combat Islamic militants and leftist rebels, as Congress brushed aside fears of a looming dictatorship.<\/p>\n
Duterte\u2019s request to extend martial law in the Mindanao region until December 31 next year and detain rebellion suspects there without charge was approved by 240 votes to 27 at a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives.<\/p>\n
Asked by reporters later on Wednesday if he would extend martial law to the whole country, Duterte said \u201call options are on the table\u201d.<\/p>\n
In May Duterte imposed military rule and suspended a constitutional guarantee against warrantless arrests across the region of 20 million people, hours after armed Islamic militants seized the southern city of Marawi.<\/p>\n
The initial period of martial law was limited by the constitution to 60 days.<\/p>\n
However, in July Congress authorised Duterte to extend martial law until the last day of 2017 as he moved to retake the city from hundreds of gunmen he accused of plotting to turn Marawi into a regional base for the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n
Duterte declared Marawi \u201cliberated\u201d in October after a five-month US-backed bombing campaign that claimed more than 1,100 lives and left large areas of the city in ruins.<\/p>\n
But on Monday he warned that those who escaped were regrouping.<\/p>\n
Duterte, who called off peace talks last month with communist rebels, also warned one of Asia\u2019s longest armed rebellions had stepped up \u201cterrorist acts\u201d.<\/p>\n
His request added to critics\u2019 fears he was seeking to steer the Philippines back into dictatorship like the late president Ferdinand Marcos did in 1972.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday Duterte compared the communists who operate in rural areas all over the country to the Islamic militants who are based in Mindanao.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are the same,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Opposition legislators said Wednesday that martial law was illegal because Duterte had declared the liberation of Marawi and described the communists as a \u201cspent force\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs this now a prelude to declaring martial law nationwide?\u201d said senate minority leader Franklin Drilon.<\/p>\n
Duterte has repeatedly said he may impose martial law across the entire nation to save the Philippines from narcotics, crime and terrorism-induced anarchy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte won martial law powers across the southern third of the country for one more year on Wednesday to combat Islamic militants and leftist rebels, as Congress brushed aside fears of a looming dictatorship. Duterte\u2019s request to extend martial law in the Mindanao region until December 31 next year and detain rebellion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13462,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13461"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13463,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13461\/revisions\/13463"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}