“I will suppress drugs and in the fullness of God’s time. you can walk about in the Philippines free of the fears of being mobbed”, the President said. “I do not have an obligation to please everybody or to please some person,”, he said without elaborating, or mentioning any names or specific country that he intends to send a clear message to.
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Obama and Duterte shook hands and had a brief chat on Wednesday, officials said, easing the standoff. That had caused Obama to cancel a formal meeting scheduled for Tuesday.
“We are not going to back off from our position when we are working with a country”, he said adding, “It has no impact on our broader relationship with the Philippine people and on the wide range of programmes and security cooperation”. 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. “Also gave a statement before, several weeks ago, about the human rights violation”.
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo asked for Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte’s help to resolve the illegal haj pilgrims case involving Indonesians.
“I got really angry about these threats over this human rights issue”.
epa05526836 President of the Philipinnes Rodrigo Duterte (C) walks to a meeting during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summits at the National Convention Center (NCC) in Vientiane, Laos, 06 September 2016.
I realize this raises tensions, Obama said earlier Thursday about the ruling.
Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said the President’s next foreign visit might either be Vietnam or Thailand this month.
The whole room was silent and he waited for Obama to respond but he remained quiet, Duterte said.
“You actually have to know what you’re talking about, and you actually have to have done your homework”, he said.
“I do not care about him”.
“There is this process that seems to take place over the course of the election season where somehow behavior that in normal times we would consider completely unacceptable and outrageous becomes normalized”, he said.
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However, the meeting did not touch on the issue of death row drug convict Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso of the Philippines, despite Duterte’s plan to plead with Jokowi for mercy, said Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly, who was among the ministers joining the bilateral talks.
