Panelo: Women's rights group failed to discern 'reality from rebuke'

Chief Presidential Legal Counsel and Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo on Sunday  blasted a women's rights group for being unable to discern "reality from rebuke."

Panelo made the remark after a women's rights group lambasted Duterte for sharing in his speech on Saturday in Kidapawan City a story involving sexual abuses of some priests inside confessionals.

He said groups advocating protection of women's rights, in their obsession to put the President in a bad light, have lost the ability for discernment.

Salvador Panelo statement o... by on Scribd

"It is unfortunate that in its zeal to promote its advocacy on the protection of women's rights as well as in its obsession to put the President in a bad light, the women's rights group has lost the ability of discerning a reality from a rebuke on the hypocrisy of the priests who molested him and his classmates when they were high school students," Panelo said in a statement.

Panelo also defended President's "inimitable allegorical style of dramatizing the sexual abuse he [Duterte] suffered" in the hands of a priest when he was a young boy.

He also praised the President's "unorthodox and mischievous method of exposing and criticizing the hypocritical practices of those men in religious cloak," adding that,  "Duterte's shocking and amusing out-of-the box utterances have ... endeared him to the masses, as he is able to put across his political and social dogmas."

Earlier, progressive lawmakers who advocate protection of women's rights criticized Duterte for his "confessional tale" with the him confessing that he touched the private part of a maid while she was sleeping.

The tale was "really disgusting and uncalled for," the lawmakers said, adding that the story was intended to put, yet again, the Catholic Church in a bad light. —LBG, GMA News