Every official presidential trip abroad must have a purpose better than just being a gift to anyone in the government, Senator Panfilo Lacson said Tuesday.
He made the statement in reaction to President Rodrigo Duterte who said he would bring along with him some retiring military and police officials as “my gift to them for serving the country well” during his trip to Israel.
But Malacañang said there was nothing wrong with Duterte taking several retiring military officials and police officers with him in his official visit to Israel and Jordan.
“[There is] nothing wrong with it,” Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque told reporters on Tuesday.
“I think strengthening security cooperation is one of the matters that will really be discussed in the Middle East as well.”
Roque said aside from the grant of travel as a reward, the officials accompanying Duterte would also have an official agenda in Israel.
Duterte will be in Israel from Sept. 2 to 5 and then visit neighboring Jordan, which has committed to donate two attack helicopters to the Philippines.
Duterte said he will visit the two countries to check on the welfare of the thousands of Filipino workers there.
Lacson, a former police chief, said goodwill might be a better word for what Duterte actually meant.
He said the reason was plain as it was simple: Government officials were always expected to give their best.
“Rewards for the more deserving come in the form of promotions, awards”•even a pat on the back,” Lacson said.
But Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said in almost all of the foreign trips of the President, he was looking at what was out there, and bringing some military and police officers with him to see what was out there was part of it.
Cayetano also described Rep. Gary Alejano as a “purveyor of fake news.”
At first, Cayetano said, he thought Alejano had just been given a bum steer when the latter earlier claimed that the administration had allegedly ordered the military not to patrol the disputed West Philippine Sea.
But with Alejano’s latest claim about Duterte’s coming trip to Israel next week, he said he was now convinced that Alejano had become a “purveyor of fake news.”
“First and foremost, in a state visit every move you make is monitored. So whether a doctor goes to him or he goes to a hospital, you cannot keep that a secret,” Cayetano said.
He rejected Alejano’s apparent “disclosure” that Duterte would go to Israel to seek medical treatment. With Nat Mariano