President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday denied that his “mouth” put the country in bad light in the international scene.
Duterte made local and international headlines by cursing foreign critics, including Pope Francis and US President Barack Obama, of his war against drugs.
After all, the 71-year-old leader said, Russia and China, are willing to talk with him.
In a privilege speech, Senator Leila de Lima blamed Duterte for the Philippines’ bad image in the global media, after his ally Senator Alan Peter Cayetano exclaimed that it was De Lima’s Senate probe that was bringing the country down.
“The problem of this country and this administration is the extrajudicial killing of more than 3,000 of our countrymen in the past three months, or more than a thousand per month,” De Lima said.
“In addition, the President’s mouth, which does not hesitate to curse [United Nations] officials, the Pope, US President [Barack] Obama, and [UN] Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon,” she added.
Duterte dared global credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s to leave the country after it said that the Philippines will get no rating upgrade in the next two years because of his unpredictability and uncertainty over his domestic and foreign policies.
“Leave now and we will start on our own,” he said.
“These credit agencies who gave a BB plus rating, I do not care about you,” he said.
He also cursed the European Union for failing to respond to the migrant crisis.
“EU? Fuck you. You pretended to be imbued with humanity, now there are many people who are dying in the high seas,” Duterte said.
“Do not keep complaining about my mouth because my mouth is not the problem. It cannot bring down a country. But it can raise a generation of right-thinking Filipinos,” Duterte told the men of the Police Regional Office 10 at Camp Vicente Alagar, Cagayan de Oro.