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Andanar compares Duterte to Jesus: Like the apostles, I obeyed


Despite President Rodrigo Duterte's propensity for blurting out invectives in his speeches, Presidential Communications Office head Secretary Martin Andanar saw it fit to compare the outspoken Chief Executive to the Lord himself.

In his first opinion column for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Andanar compared his first meeting with Duterte in Davao City to when Jesus met the fishermen who would be his apostles at Galilee.

During the meeting at the DPWH facility in Panacan—fondly called Panacanang—Andanar said did not expect that he would be asked to lead the Presidential Communications Office (PCO).

“With characteristic decisiveness, the President-elect instructed me to put back together the presidential communications apparatus fragmented by the outgoing administration. He told me to choose my people and to head the unified apparatus,” Andanar said in his piece.

“I was awed by that investment of faith in my abilities. This must have been how those fishermen at Galilee felt when Jesus walked over and told them to follow him, to be fishers of men. Like the apostles, I obeyed,” he added.

Andanar was apparently referring to Matthew 4:18-19 of the Bible, which detailed how Jesus met fishermen Simon--also called Peter--and his brother Andrew and asked them to follow him. They were Jesus' first disciples.

He said that that it was not the time to walk away from duty and pointed out that his current post had been both a source of pride and a personal nightmare.

"Before that life-changing meeting, I continued to imagine myself a volunteer, giving advice here and there, doing some useful things for the President we after all worked to get elected to the post. I did not expect to be assigned the daunting role I ended up with," Andanar said.

"Maybe I should have. That is how President Duterte operates. He assigns people to do things they never imagined themselves capable of doing beforehand. He invests so much trust in the people he works with, expecting them to exceed expectation. That is at once a source of pride and a personal nightmare," he added. —NB, GMA News

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