THE daughter of President Rodrigo Duterte, on Sunday blasted groups who criticized her father, after he threatened to set up a revolutionary government in the face of threats of destabilization.
“Power grabbers have made their point, made their presence felt, caught our attention, and we know who they are,” said Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte in a statement released Sunday. “The threat of destabilization is as real as terrorism.”
The group Tindig Pilipinas called President Duterte paranoid and insecure in reaction to his statement about setting up a revolutionary government.
The mayor dismissed the statement.
“How can he insecure when he is the President?
When you are the President, there is nothing that will make you feel insecure — not survey results or a person like [Senator Antonio] Trillanes [IV] or a power-hungry group called Tindig Pilipinas,” she said.
She added that all the President’s destabilization claims are from intel reports and reliable source from inside the offices of the people identified with the opposition.
Communications Secretary Martin Andanar also tore into Tindig Pilipinas.
“Tindig is spreading lies to push a selfish agenda but this will not weaken the resolve of the President to carry out what he promised to do. Reduce crime and corruption, provide better services for the poorest of our people, and raise the country’s international reputation by showing it cannot be cowed into accepting agreements against its best interests,” Andanar said in a statement.
Duterte said Friday that he would declare a revolutionary government instead of seeking congressional approval for martial law, if communists and other opponents tried to destabilize his rule.
Tindig Pilipinas said on Saturday that only a “paranoid and insecure little man” would feel the need to issue such a threat.
“That’s their opinion and we don’t share it. We have been working closely with the President and we can assure you that his mind is sound. These sorts of comments from his detractors only take away attention from more vital issues of the state,” Andanar said.
“We’re confronted with threats all around from possible conflict in [North Korea] to terrorism from within in addition to natural calamities and criminality,” he added.
Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo insisted that Duterte had already executed a bank secrecy waiver, which he said has already proven that he did not have billions of pesos in hidden wealth.
Panelo issued the statement after Tindig Pilipinas lauched a signature campaign urging Duterte to sign a bank secrecy waiver to end doubts about his alleged unexplained wealth.
“We, the Filipino people, call on President Duterte to sign the waiver on the secrecy of bank deposits. We deserve a transparent and accountable leader,” Tindig Pilipinas said in its petition.
The group held a rally at the University of the Philippines in Quezon City on Saturday afternoon, which was attended by members of the opposition, including Trillanes.
Panelo said that the special power of attorney that Duterte issued when he was still a candidate in 2016 was still valid.
“He already has a waiver and it’s binding,” he said in Filipino.
He added that a decline in the President’s approval rating in the recent Social Weather Stations survey was directed more at the Philippine National Police rather than Duterte himself, over the death of several teenagers in the anti-drug war.
He cited instead the Pulse Asia survey that showed the President still had an 80 percent approval rating as proof that most Filipinos still supported Duterte.
Meanwhile, a group calling itself Movement Against Tyranny said Duterte’s “revolutionary government” was nothing but a one-man dictatorship that he had been dreaming of since last year.
“Duterte merely wants to concentrate all governmental power to himself as president. He wants to further dismantle whatever little is left of the system of checks and balances provided by a rubber stamp Congress, a Supreme Court dominated by his and former President (Gloria Macapagal) Arroyo’s appointees, and easily intimidated constitutional bodies like the Office of the Ombudsman and Commission on Human Rights,” the group said.
The group said Duterte aims to further intimidate the critical press and overwhelm social media with his fake news-churning troll army.
Worse, in order to impose his “revolutionary” regime on the people, he will have to declare martial law nationwide, they said.
Trillanes, meanwhile, said Duterte’s threat was aimed at diverting attention from controversies, including corruption allegations against him and his family.
“He cannot face the bank account issue. He has been talking of so many things, even cursing the (European Union) ambassadors, but that won’t work because we will get back to the… real issue which he was trying to avoid,” he said.
Duterte has repeatedly denied that he has P2 billion in bank accounts, saying that his lifetime savings would not exceed P40 million.
Trillanes has accused the President’s eldest son, Davao City Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte as behind the so-called Davao Group, which has been implicated in massive corruption at the Bureau of Customs (BOC).
The opposition senator said the group reportedly facilitated transactions at the BOC, including the P6.4-billion shabu shipment from Xiamen, China, in exchange for huge bribes.