Duterte ‘desperate’ for getting Enrile as back-up on WPS issue —De Lima

Senator Leila de Lima on Wednesday said President Rodrigo Duterte showed how desperate he was after inviting former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile to back him up in the South China Sea issue.

In a pre-recorded Cabinet meeting on Monday, Duterte and Enrile's opinion on defending Philippines' sovereignty in the West Philippine Sea. The former legislator advised Duterte to stop antagonizing China amid the territorial dispute. 

But de Lima, staunch critic of Duterte, called Enrile and Duterte's exchange of views into the maritime issues a "mutual ego-massaging session for two has-beens of Philippine history."

"That Duterte would go to such lengths to ask Enrile to vouch for his treasonous and obscene Sinophile policies only reflects on the bankruptcy of any justification for said policies," de Lima said.

"Duterte is scraping the bottom of the barrel by calling for backup from someone as crooked as one full of fish hooks," the detained senator added.

"As I already said, it is not every day that a President commits treason, and a President so hard-pressed to defend himself against such accusations as to call on the symbol of the martial law ancient regime to back him up on his treasonous conduct only goes to show how desperate he is," de Lima further pointed out.

Enrile was also inaccurate in claiming that the Philippines cannot rely on its Mutual Defense Treaty with the US in defending territorial waters from China, de Lima said.

The senator explained that the treaty can also be applied to attacks on the West Philippine Sea, not only the Pacific.

"Enrile’s claim that the MDT only applied to an attack in the Pacific also fails to take into account the US State Secretary’s latest statement that it applied to the WPS as well. Enrile’s reading of the MDT turns out to be, well, as old as the MDT," said de Lima.

During the Talk to the Nation, Enrile shed light on another Duterte critic-- Senator Antonio Trillanes IV's role on how the country allegedly lost Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal.—LDF, GMA News