Duterte’s administration began at noon on June 30, 2016, as he became the Philippines’ sixteenth president, following Benigno Aquino III.

On May 9, 2016, Duterte was elected as the 16th President of the Philippines with 16.6 million votes, the most of any Philippine president before him, and a margin of 6.6 million votes over the second placer. On May 30, 2016, he was formally declared by a joint session of the Philippine Congress. He is Mindanao’s first President and the first local chief executive to be elected directly to the Office of the President.

In 2016, Duterte increased his anti-terrorism and communist insurgency campaign. He implemented the contentious Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 and ruled over the five-month-long Battle of Marawi, imposing martial law over Mindanao and extending it for two years to maintain peace on the island.

Duterte launched a nationwide drive to eliminate crime, corruption, and illegal drugs. He conducted an expanded drug war, which resulted in the deaths of around 6,600 persons associated with the illegal drug trade as of July 2019, bringing international condemnation.

President Rodrigo Roa Duterte was born on March 28, 1945, in Maasin, Southern Leyte, to government employees Vicente Duterte and Soledad Roa. His mother was a public school teacher, while his father worked for the government. Duterte’s origins are from the Visayas. His early years were spent in Danao, Cebu, his father’s homeland. His mother is from Cabadbaran, Agusan del Norte, and his paternal grandmother was a Maranao, so he has direct ties to Mindanao. In 1949, when Duterte was four years old, his family relocated to Davao, where his father, Vicente, later went into politics and was elected governor, serving from 1959 to 1965.