LEFTISTS in President Rodrigo Duterte’s “diverse” Cabinet are enough proof he is not a traditional politician, a senior Cabinet official said Monday after the Communist Party of the Philippines assailed the President and called him a “rotten trapo” for the sudden burial of former President Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
“The CPP is entitled to its opinion but PRRD’s [the President] not being a trapo is precisely the very reason why he won the presidential elections by a landslide,” Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo said in a statement.
“All his official actions since assuming the presidency are anathema to the actions of a traditional politician. His appointment to his Cabinet of some well-known left leaning personalities can never be made nor replicated by a trapo president,” he added.
On Sunday, the CPP lambasted President Duterte for allegedly “proving himself a rotten trapo” [traditional politician]when he gave the green light to the burial of the late President, as they urged him to reverse the “historical wrong” of burying Marcos alongside heroes, national artists, soldiers and ranking public officials.
But Panelo downplayed CPP’s claims, saying Duterte simply enforced the spirit of the law.
“It is not President Duterte that allowed the burial of Marcos but the existing law and regulations covering it, the President only enforced it pursuant to his constitutional duty to enforce the Constitution and the law,” he said.
“The President enforcing the dictates of the law will never put him in isolation from the governed as in fact his approval rating is the highest among previous Presidents.”
Marcos was buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani last Friday in what critics called clandestine rites that shocked activist groups and alleged Martial Law victims.
The burial has previously set the CPP and Duterte on a collision course.
The Reds were bitter rivals of Marcos who declared Martial Law to suppress communism while Duterte, a friend of the Marcoses, has insisted the late strongman deserves a hero’s burial for serving the country as a soldier.
The President is currently forging a peace pact with the CPP to end a decades-long insurgency in the south.
Leftists in the Cabinet said they saw no need to resign and would continue to work on the reforms they envision, despite their opposition to the President’s decision to allow Marcos’ burial.
In a separate statement, Panelo underscored the “vocal minority” against the burial, saying the President was guaranteeing their constitutional freedoms to protest amid opposition.
“It is not true that there is a growing protest against the burial; what we have is a vocal minority exercising its democratic right to express a grievance allowed and guaranteed by the Constitution. President Duterte is upholding such right. The clash of ideas is democracy in action,” he added.