PEOPLE can expect fewer curses from President Rodrigo Duterte against the United States, after he declared that he can get along with President-elect Donald Trump.
“Oh I’m sure. We have no fight. I can always be a friend to anybody, especially to a president, chief executive of another country,” Duterte told reporters Tuesday.
Unlike US President Barack Obama, Trump has never spoke out against the administration’s bloody war on illegal drugs, Duterte said.
Duterte, who won a May election by a huge margin is often compared with Trump, having himself been the alternative candidate from outside of national politics.
He has also threatened repeatedly to sever the country’s military relationship with the US, which has been a key element of Washington’s “pivot” to Asia.
Duterte has also slammed Washington’s threat to withdraw aid if the Philippines doesn’t toe the line “like a dog on a leash.”
Just like Trump, then Davao mayor Duterte campaigned on a populist, anti-establishment platform and struck a chord among ordinary Filipinos, with his promises to fix what he called a “broken country,” and bragged about sexually harassing women.
In the same interview, Duterte said he trusted Trump’s judgment, particularly on matters relating to immigration amid threats that he will be cracking down on immigrants, including Filipinos.
“I trust in his judgment and he would be fair in the matter of the treatment of illegal immigrants,” Duterte said.
“I cannot talk for the illegals because whether the President is Trump or not, or somebody else it won’t matter. Because an illegal is always an illegal. So he is subject at any time a deportation,” he added.
Malacañang, meanwhile, urged undocumented Filipinos in the United States to return to the country amid the threat of massive deportation of illegal immigrants once Trump assumes office in January.
“The Trump policy will have minimal effect on US-based OFWs, according to Secretary Bello,” presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella said in a Palace press briefing.
“The interesting point here is that should the undocumented OFWs decide to come home, Bello noted that the government is ready to provide them assistance and in his words, the end program of the President is to bring back our OFWs so we already established a mechanism [for their return],” he said.
Abella also voiced the position of the National Economic and Development Authority, saying that the non-voice component of the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry should be further expanded to avert Trump’s protectionist policies.
Trump said Monday that he would be deporting millions of undocumented migrants.
“What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million”•we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate,” Trump said in an excerpt released ahead of broadcast by CBS’s 60 Minutes program.
The billionaire real estate tycoon also made security at the US Mexico border a central plank of his presidential campaign and said it might not consist entirely of brick and mortar but also fences in some areas.
A top American commander, meanwhile, said military cooperation between the US and the Philippines has remained unchanged, despite Duterte’s inflammatory remarks against the United States.
“Despite what he has said, there has been no change in anything with the Philippines,” said Harry Harris, commander of the US Pacific Command, during an event in Washington.
Harris was slated to participate Tuesday in high-level meetings between the two countries to schedule joint military exercises for 2017 and after.
“I am optimistic,” he said of the meetings, adding that thus far the exercises program has been on track.
Harris said there could be “a refocusing.. of some of the bigger exercises in 2017.”
Until Duterte came to power in June, Manila was one of the United States’ closest allies in Asia, and it was viewed as a vital link in the political “pivot” or “rebalancing” of US policy toward the Asia-Pacific region under Obama.
The Philippines had agreed to allow the United States to use five of its bases, and Harris said “that has not changed so far and I have no reason to believe it will change.”
“We haven’t been asked to remove US forces,” he said, notably those operating against Muslim separatists in the southern island of Mindanao.
He also said the Philippines had not asked Washington to stop keeping surveillance planes at Clark Air Base on Luzon Island.
Late last month, Duterte had announced his country’s “separation” from the United States and called for an end within two years to the presence of “foreign military troops”—a clear reference to American forces.
Duterte later struck a more conciliatory tone, saying there would be no “severance of ties” with Washington. He added that Manila would simply pursue a more independent line in foreign affairs while improving its ties with Beijing.