President Barack Obama will meet with South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Tuesday instead of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte after he referred to Obama as a “son of a whore.” National Post reports:
In his typical foul-mouthed style, Duterte responded: “I am a president of a sovereign state and we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody. You must be respectful. Do not just throw questions. Putang ina I will swear at you in that forum,” he said, using the Tagalog phrase for son of a bitch. Some translations have suggested the phrase is closer to “son of a whore.”
“Clearly, he’s a colorful guy,” Obama said. “What I’ve instructed my team to do is talk to their Philippine counterparts to find out is this in fact a time where we can have some constructive, productive conversations.”
Hours later, Obama’s National Security Council spokesman Ned Price indicated Obama would no longer meet with Duterte.”Obama will not be holding a bilateral meeting with President Duterte of the Philippines this afternoon,” Price said in a statement. “Instead he will meet with President Park of the Republican of Korea.”
Obama wanted to speak with Duterte in Laos at a meeting of Southeast Asian leaders about his war on drugs. Since Duterte took office, officials have killed almost 2,000 suspected drug dealers. Photos from the media have shown these people “often bound hand and foot, shirts soaked in blood, their faces sometimes covered in duct tape, wearing crude signs proclaiming their alleged crimes.”
But Duterte warned the country that this type of reform would happen when he came to power:
He’s repeatedly boasted that his presidency would see the end of crime, and on several occasions has hinted openly that he doesn’t oppose his police force or even citizens taking the lives of suspected criminals.In a nationally televised speech in June, Duterte told citizens, “If (a criminal) fights, and he fights to the death, you can kill him.” He went on to say, “Please feel free to call us, the police, or do it yourself if you have the gun … you have my support.”
At least 700 have died during police operations:
“Double your efforts. Triple them, if need be. We will not stop until the last drug lord, the last financier, and the last pusher have surrendered or put behind bars — or below the ground, if they so wish,” Duterte said during his State of the Nation speech on July 25.
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