The AmCham was specifically referring to the increasing number of slain drug suspects amid the government’s war against illegal drugs, and the expletives hurled by President Rodrigo Duterte against US President Barack Obama.
Advertisement
Obama, who lived in Indonesia as a boy with his mother, a development worker, told a group of young leaders that the emphasis he had placed on Asia over his two terms was personal.
Presidential aide Ben Rhodes later told reporters the USA canceled the two leaders’ one-on-one meeting after the remark because “the nature of those comments was not constructive and… having a meeting where all we were gonna discuss was a series of comments, frankly did not strike us as the most constructive way to approach a bilateral meeting”.
“I will continue the campaign against the criminals”.
He recalled, “I produced a few pages with pictures about the pacification by Americans in the 1990s”.
The summit ended with Laos turning over the chairmanship of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations to Duterte, whose country will host the annual diplomatic gathering next year. I said I never made the statement.
But Obama pointedly told the meeting that the arbitration ruling, which China refuses to recognize, was “binding”. He said it was a mutually agreed meeting, although he didn’t have details of what was discussed.
On the last day of the summit, Duterte receives the chairmanship of ASEAN in 2017.
“In addition, traditionally excellent bilateral relations between the United States and the Philippines have recently been strained by language from Philippine leaders”.
He said his favorite Filipino cuss word-putang ina-was lost in translation.
Tensions between the United States and the Philippines, its former colony, are unusual at high-level meetings. Duterte also made that remark before assuming the office of the presidency, when many in Philippine media were still wondering whether Duterte would alter his well-known profane way of speaking to better fit the office of the presidency once inaugurated.
Advertisement
The showdown was a fitting climax to a brutal few days of diplomacy that began with the famously acidtongued Duterte branding Obama a “son of a whore”. It remains to be seen, though, if he will ever live down that tiff with the US President.
