Sir absolutely wrong, he had a clear mandate and his VP is a Duterte, the military had been sanitized by the elder Duterte and the rank and file will not follow the chain of command if ordered to, my thinking is that he was confronted by the fact that the Chinese are well inform of his deal ( to unfrozen their family illegal wealth) with the American and was given a choice of more economic assistance or halting the current one IF choose to side with the US, he choose the latter and the rest is history. Duterte is seething in anger, his pet project the Mindanao Railway system is affected, his mistake is to prioritized other regions first to show his sincerity to divide the pie evenly.
Of course Manila is the one who cancel it NOT the Chinese....lol
Nov 11, 2023 — In scrapping US$5 billion worth of rail projects, the
Philippines cited
Chinese foot-dragging over financing – but observers speculate it ...