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Cayetano amid 'negative' perception on Duterte: Pinoys prouder now more than ever


Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano has said Filipinos are much prouder now despite the supposed negative perception on President Rodrigo Duterte in the international community.

"Filipinos are prouder now more than ever," Cayetano told Al Jazeera's Mehdi Hasan in an interview on Friday.

He also told Hasan that he is not having a hard time of being the face of the Philippine government in the global community despite "outrageous offensive things" that Duterte has uttered in speeches.

Hasan cited in the interview the tirades thrown by Duterte against former United States ambassador to the Philippines Philip Goldberg, the expletive against Pople Francis during the May 2016 elections and the rape joke about Australian missionary Jaqueline Hamill, who was killed and raped during a Davao City jail riot in 1989.

Cayetano clarified that the supposed bad perception on Duterte's language is due to the wrong interpretation of the foreign media.

The foreign affairs chief also said that Duterte "never jokes about rape" and "very made about rape."

Duterte has made two rape jokes during separate speeches in May and July.

Cayetano believes that Duterte may be misunderstood in western countries, but "not in the Philippines, not in the Middle East, not in China and not in Russia."

In the same interview, Cayetano told Hasan that the 3,811 suspects killed in police operations from July 1, 2016 to Aug. 29, 2017 were all drug dealers.

He also assured Hasan that "every single" case of deaths in police operations are being investigated.

He added that the international community's negative perception on the Philippine war on drugs is caused by the campaign of "biased human rights groups." —ALG, GMA News

 

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