In a speech before hundreds of Filipino community members at the grand ballroom of the Shangri-La Jakarta on Friday, the President claimed he never made the statement and blamed the media for twisting his departure speech which led to the cancellation of his meeting with Obama at the Asean summit in Laos. I said I never made the statement.
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“Because the consequences of when you do it the wrong way are innocent people get hurt and you have a bunch of unintended consequences that don’t solve the problem”, Obama said.
Asked about Duterte’s profanity against him, Obama said, “I do not take these comments personally, because… this is a phrase he has used repeatedly, including directed at the pope and others”.
Duterte was elected to office in a landslide this year after pledging to kill 100,000 people in an unprecedented war on crime.
“I think that any reasonable person. would be puzzled about how this became somehow indicative of the work that we’ve done here”, the president said of the incident, citing economic programs, development, and the promotion of civil society as measures of success in the region.
“I do not care about him”.
Duterte has said the Philippines is in danger of becoming a “narco state”, and eliminating drugs in society is the top priority of his administration.
“You must be respectful”. You must not just throw away questions.
Obama said he shook hands with President Duterte before the gala dinner Wednesday night at the ASEAN Summit. Obama made history on the trip when he became the first USA president to visit Laos, the small country that still bears the scars of a formerly secret US bombing campaign during the Vietnam War that left behind millions of unexploded bombs.
He has said he is charting a foreign policy not dependent on the U.S., and has moved to reduce tensions with China over rival territorial claims.
Obama earlier canceled a meeting with Duterte after the Philippine leader referred to him in comments to reporters as a “son of a bitch” and warned him not to discuss the deaths of thousands of suspects in an anti-drug campaign. The photograph showed about 200 dead Filipino Moros stacked in a common pit, with an American soldier holding a rifle while stepping on the breasts of a naked Moro woman.
“But”, he added, “I can tell you from the interactions I’ve had over the last eight or nine days with foreign leaders, that this is serious business”.
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Meanwhile, Mr Duterte on Friday said he thought UN Secretary-General Ban a fool for bringing up the issue of human rights violations weeks before the summit in Laos.
