The PR nightmare continues as President Rodrigo Duterte likens himself to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and says he would “be happy” to slaughter three million drug addicts to get rid of the drug menace in the Philippines.
Addressing the media on Sat (Oct 1) afternoon, Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella said in a Philippine Daily Inquirer report, “The President’s reference to the slaughter was an oblique deflection of the way he has been pictured as a mass murderer, a Hitler, which is a label that he rejects.”
Using his expertise, Abella managed to somehow put the blame on someone else.
“It is a matter of record that the reference to Hitler did not originate from the President. Days before the May presidential elections, the President’s opponents introduced this issue to gain political mileage,” Abella said in another statement on the same day.
He was of course talking about former president Benigno Aquino III, who reminded Filipinos before the May 2016 elections of how Hitler rose to power, somehow likening it to Duterte’s popularity.
Abella said the rising death toll in Duterte’s all-out war on drugs will save the next generation, unlike Hitler’s holocaust.
“He likewise draws an oblique conclusion that while the holocaust was an attempt to exterminate the future generation of Jews, the so-called extrajudicial killings, roundly attributed to him, will nevertheless result in the salvation of the next generation of Filipinos,” Abella said.
CONTEXT: Full text and Q&A of Duterte’s Sep 30 speech
The presidential spokesperson also addressed the suffering of the Jews under Hitler’s reign.
“The Philippines recognizes the deep significance of the Jewish experience especially their tragic and painful history… We do not wish to diminish the profound loss of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust – that deep midnight of their story as a people,” Abella said in a separate Inquirer report.
Abella clarified that Hitler murdered millions of innocent Jews while Duterte only wants to kill drug addicts, dealers and criminals.
“Those are two entirely different things,” Abella emphasized.
