“While the immediate cause was my strong comments to certain press questions that elicited concern and distress, we also regret that it came across as a personal attack on the USA president”, Duterte said in a statement read by spokesman Ernesto Abella Tuesday.
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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte expressed regret Tuesday over his “son of a bitch” remark while referring to President Barack Obama, in a rare display of contrition by a politician whose wide arc of profanities has unabashedly targeted world figures including the pope and the United Nations chief. He had been scheduled to meet Obama separately in Laos, but Obama indicated he had second thoughts, and the White House announced that the meeting had been canceled. Duterte, who became president of the Philippines in June, called Obama “son of a whore” Monday. You just don’t throw question and statements. “We must press on”, he declared in a speech at a business and investment conference on the sidelines of a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which he is attending.
The meeting would have been the first between the two presidents. Duterte responded: “I am a president of a sovereign state and we have long ceased to be a colony”. Duterte just threw mud at the presidency of the United States.
But perhaps Duterte’s aides realized it would be unwise to take on the most powerful official in the world, and that there would be a price to pay for insulting the president of the United States.
He said that his government’s primary intention is to chalk out an “independent foreign policy” while promoting closer ties with all nations, especially the United States, a long-standing ally.
He also referred to the United State’s previous colonisation of the country claiming that the USA had not apologised for its apparent misdeeds during its colonial rule. I asked who was coming.
“I do not want to quarrel with him”. You must be respectful.
“I know that the remnants of war continue to shatter lives”, the president acknowledged Tuesday in an address to the Laotian people. “Putang ina I will swear at you in that forum”, he said, using the Tagalog phrase for “son of a bitch”.
The Philippines leader in Tuesday’s statement said he feels deep regard and an affinity with Obama, and emphasised that he looked forward at irioning out differences with the US. Following the criticism, President Duterte turned down a meeting with U.N Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Duterte is scrambling to smooth things over with the USA, a longtime ally.
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Warning of “bloody” confrontation over the South China Sea with China if they invaded into the Filipino territory, Duterte said he would jet ski into the conflicted South China Sea region and plant the flag of Philippines.
