So does the head of Tigdaranao, a small island barangay, or village.
"Even as a barangay captain, I will kill a son of a gun.
He said that drug money had corrupted even the smallest unit of local government, the barangay.
"The barangay captains connive or coöperate or extend assistance to terrorists and drugs," he said.
The Spaniards retained the barangay as their basic unit of local administration in the islands.
The barangay [neighbourhood] in that peninsula is the biggest one in the city and 95% of its houses are made of light materials.
Tacloban residents complained that only barangay (wards), and in some cases voters, of the same political affiliation as president Benigno Aquino III were getting help.
"The masses dream Duterte can help," said Artemio Jiménez, who runs one of city's largest districts, called a barangay, of 200,000 people.
What's worrying is that we're getting reports from different barangay who say there are 20 bodies and we get there and find there are 30".
"I love the free-flowing nature of it, yet the disciplined play," Tim Cone, the head coach of the P.B.A.'s Barangay Ginebra San Miguel, told me recently.
"In Mindanao, the mayors choose the barangay chiefs and expect them to follow orders," said Don Mangansakan, 31, the vice mayor of Pikit, a nearby town.
