Duterte wants to change the name in the Philippines

BANGKOK.- The Philippine President,

Rodrigo Duterte

, plans to rename the country with the name "Maharlika", a Malay word that can be translated as "nobly created".

It is a question of taking up an initiative already proposed in the eighties by the dictator Ferdinando Marcos in order to give a nationalist stamp likely to erase part of the Spanish colonial inheritance, local media reported.

In a speech delivered during the distribution of land titles in the province of Maquindanao, at the southern tip of the archipelago and Muslim majority, the president again raised the idea. "We will change that one day, Marcos was right, I wanted to change the name to Maharlika, because that is a word in Malay," said the president.

The name of

philippines

It refers to its Spanish colonial past and was placed in the 16th century in honor of King Felipe II.

Duterte is an open admirer of Marcos and stirrers the nationalist tradition against the influence of the United States, who also took control of the archipelago after the 1898 war against Spain.

ANSA Agency