He said

MY friends hate me when I tell them Duterte the orator is no great shakes whereas Duterte the performer who goes off-script is engagingly play­ful, sarcastic, dead-serious, mean and nasty.

I don’t know how many of those friends watched his SONA, but the juic­iest quips were not in the script – and he knew it, and changed gears with his ad libs.

“A psychic told me, the first crack (from an earthquake) will be in the cen­ter of this floor.” His audience clapped their hands and laughed nervously. What an icebreaker!

Praises were reserved for Chairman Domingo for doubling Pagcor’s income and DENR Sec Cimatu for Boracay’s paradise regained. “I like Cimatu be­cause he mixes pleasure with business. That’s the way to do it.”

Land Bank got the short end of the stick for becoming the “no. 1 com­mercial bank but forgetting the Land in its name.” SSS, LTO, BIR, Pag-IBIG, and LRA (Land Registration Authority) he named as the “top five that need to improve their services drastically,” in three years. Otherwise, “I will kill you.”

“We are so industrious that we are producing more people.” This time, he did not provoke the Church.

“We in government talk too much, act too little. And slow.”

“We are our own tormentors, de­mons. ‘For the boys, sponsoring an event’ for every transaction. Corrup­tion, the dirt and muck that sticks to the flesh, like leeches.”

“The arbitral ruling allows us to share fishing rights. Lapu-Lapu was the first. . . The West Philippine Sea is ours [ap­plause] but we have to temper it with the times.”

“Who’s a smoker here? They should be exterminated from the face of the earth.”

When “I lost my girlfriend” he di­aled Davao City’s 911 and was told, “You have many girlfriends in Manila, go there.” He also bragged about the “CCTV cameras on every corner.”

DILG Sec Año will “see to it that all clearances, permits are released by mayors in three days or else I will go there myself.”

The best was yet to come. After his act, PRRD the “prisoner” who is not free to shop for his own Jockeys was in a hurry to get away from the ses­sion hall. He ended up singing “Ikaw” and “Moon River” with PPO. He was so touched he sighed, “The music brings your soul to beauty,” then invited “ten of you” – the orchestra has 60 musi­cians – to dinner in the Palace.