THE United States said Tuesday it was keen to work with whoever wins the presidential election in the Philippines, after Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte claimed victory.
“We look forward to working with and congratulating the winner,” State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said, after the 71-year-old firebrand declared himself the winner of Monday’s voting.
Trudeau said the official results had not yet been confirmed, but said the United States would work with whichever candidate emerges on top.
“Washington respects the choice of the Philippines’ people. We will gladly work with the leader they’ve selected,” she added, without being drawn on some of Duterte’s more controversial statements.
Duterte, who has vowed a fierce crackdown on crime and corruption, has made no secret of his involvement in running vigilante death squads as mayor of Davao and waged an incendiary campaign.
Duterte dominated campaign media coverage and generated international headlines with his relentless gutter talk, cursing the Pope and boasting repeatedly about his Viagra-fueled affairs.
He caused further disgust in diplomatic circles by joking that he should have been first to have sex with an Australian missionary who was raped and killed in a 1989 prison riot in Davao.
Duterte was enraged when the US and Australian ambassadors criticized his comments and even threatened to break ties with Washington, one of the Philippines’ closest allies.
On Tuesday, he said it was up to US officials to repair relations with him and indicated that he was prepared to hold direct talks with Beijing over a sensitive territorial dispute in the South China Sea.
This, at least, did not cause offense.
“The United States has consistently expressed support for nations to exercise peaceful means to resolve territorial or maritime disputes without the use of force, intimidation or coercion,” Trudeau said.
Duterte spokesman Peter Tiu Laviña admitted Wednesday they have problems with at least three embassies over statements made during the campaign.
Aside from the US and Australia, Singapore took offense when a fake photo showed Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong endorsing Duterte went viral. The Singapore embassy immediately issued a denial.
Then Duterte, in one campaign rally, admitted burning a Singaporean flag after overseas worker Flor Contemplacion was executed in Singapore for murder in 1995.
On Tuesday, China said it hopes the new Philippine government will strengthen the strained relations between Manila and Beijing.
“China hopes the Philippines’ new government can work in the same direction with China, properly handle our differences and get bilateral ties back on track with concrete actions,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said in a press conference on Tuesday.
China rejected Duterte’s call for a multilateral approach that will involve the US, Japan and Australia, and countries that have territorial claims in the South China Sea, insisting on a dual track approach in which only directly concerned states in the dispute would be involved in negotiations. John Paolo Bencito, AFP