Sorry, not sorry.
That seems to be what Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo is saying when he told reporters today that President Rodrigo Duterte will not apologize for the story he said last week about molesting a woman who worked as a domestic worker for his family.
Panelo said that Duterte told the story deliberately to highlight the hypocrisy of the clergy, according to Sun Star.
Duterte’s spokesperson said: “Precisely, he deliberately said that. It was a concocted story to dramatize the hypocrisy of a particular man in cloak.”
Duterte’s scandalous story was mentioned at a speech he delivered at an event in Kidapawan City, reported the Philippine Daily Inquirer. In his speech, he recounted confessing to a priest when he was in high school that he tried to insert his finger into the domestic worker’s underwear while she was asleep.
The AFP quoted him saying: “I lifted the blanket… I tried to touch what was inside the panty.”
He added: “I was touching. She woke up. So I left the room.”
Duterte then said that he returned to the woman’s room and tried to molest her.
But no matter how disgusting the story is, leave it to Panelo to defend his boss, whom he said will continue to say such tales.
Panelo was quoted by GMA News saying: “If you notice, the President has been doing that even during the campaign and that has been very effective on the listeners. His message is clear. So I think he will not stop at doing this because he thinks it’s effective, he is understood.”
Panelo said that the “concocted” story was the President’s way of making the crowd laugh, Inquirer reported.
What Panelo seemed to have ignored is the public outcry over the president’s quip.
Feminists such as the group GABRIELA (General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity, Equality, Leadership, and Action) called the story “repulsive” and told the president to resign while the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women-Asia Pacific said that the story encourages rape culture.
But Duterte’s anti-women comments are not new.
In 2016, he jested that he should have been the first person to rape an Australian missionary who was killed in a prison riot in his hometown of Davao. He also ordered soldiers to shoot women rebels in the vagina.
