The pamphlet was distributed at a Southeast Asian and East Asian summit in Laos that was overshadowed on Tuesday by the cancellation of a meeting between Duterte and Barack Obama after he referred to the USA president as a “son of a bitch”.
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Duterte quickly expressed regrets that his comments inadvertently “came across as a personal attack on the USA president”, according to a statement read by his spokesman.
The flap over Duterte’s remarks started when a reporter asked him how he meant to explain the extrajudicial killings of drug dealers to Obama. Putang ina I will swear at you in that forum, ” he said, using the Tagalog phrase for “son of a bitch”. Duterte asked. “I am no American puppet”.
“They will pay. When the time comes, I will eat you in front of people”, Duterte told an audience of Filipinos late on Monday night while in Laos for a regional summit.
The recent outburst by Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte describing President Barack Obama as the Tagalog equivalent of a “son of a bitch” isn’t unfamiliar to anyone watching the invectives fly in the USA presidential contest. “President Obama will not be holding a bilateral meeting with President Duterte of the Philippines this afternoon”, said Ned Price spokesman of the National Security Council, White House. Obama canceled his planned meeting with Duterte shortly after.
“It could hardly be perceived as an opportunity because Duterte often talks incoherently and is temperamentally unstable”, said Li Jinming, professor of worldwide relations at the Research School of Southeast Asian Studies at Xiamen University in China’s Fujian province. And true enough, Duterte’s main message for the U.S. leader on Monday seemed to be that the Philippines wouldn’t put up with any criticism, from the United States or any foreign power.
Barack Obama, on his final visit to Asia as U.S. president, insisted Tuesday that renewed USA engagement with the region would endure after he left the White House.
It also soured Obama’s last swing as president through a region he has tried to make a focus of USA foreign policy, a strategy widely seen as a response to China’s economic and military muscle-flexing.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Duterte are both bullies accustomed to getting their own way while daring anyone to question them.
Obama’s staff had earlier expressed that he also wanted to discuss the South China Sea issue with Duterte, according to Reuters.
He has previously used the epithet against Pope Francis, although he later apologized, and the US ambassador to the Philippines.
“You (Obama) must be respectful”.
On Tuesday, Malacanang Palace issued a statement in which the brash and tough-talking Duterte expressed his “regret” for his “personal” attack on Obama. His gay ambassador, the son of a whore.
Renato M. Reyes Jr., political activist and secretary general of Bayan (an alliance of leftist organizations in the Philippines), believes that President Duterte did not intend to insult Obama, but had instead tried to protect his country from outside interference, though in somewhat rude terms. “You just can not shoot a statement against the president of any country”.
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Evan Medeiros, Obama’s former top Asia adviser and now a senior analyst at the Eurasia Group, saw the row as a “speed bump, not a road block” in U.S. -Philippines ties.
