President Rodrigo Duterte’s challenge of virility to former Senator Francisco Tatad was just hyperbole, the Palace said Friday, adding Duterte was “only making fun” of the columnist for proliferating “false news.”
As usual, Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo again defended Duterte’s remark, saying he was only “dramatizing” things when he asked Tatad to “lend” his wife.
In his speech in San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan, on Thursday night, Duterte slammed Tatad for allegedly spreading rumors about his “deteriorating” health.
The former Senator recently wrote in a newspaper column that Duterte underwent a “successful” kidney transplant at the Cardinal Santos Medical Center in San Juan. The transplant, he said, was conducted on Jan. 29.
But Duterte allegedly had attended the premiere of the biopic of former Bureau of Corrections chief Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa that day.
“Hey Tatad, you know there’s a border between press freedom and disrespecting a person. If I see you, avoid me. F*** you, I will slap you. Believe it, I will slap you in front of many people,” Duterte said as he led the initial campaign rally of the ruling PDP-Laban party.
He said Tatad had violated press freedom by publishing a “disrespectful” column about his health. The 73-year-old President then dared the 79-year-old columnist to prove his manhood.
“You really want to try if we still have it or not? Do you have a wife? Lend it to me… Maybe let’s do it here. It’ll be fine. It’s just 10 minutes,” he said.
Panelo then added Duterte’s remark to his long examples of “figurative speech.”
“Well, that’s just hyperbole. That’s just to dramatize that he’s still virile at his age. He’s pissed off with false news,” Panelo told reporters.
“People have been used to this President. Hyperbole. He uses certain situations and makes fun of it, makes fun of me, and makes fun of others. It’s just for fun.”
It was not the first time that Tatad targeted the President’s state of health in his column.
In 2017 he said Duterte traveled to China to assess his health condition with the doctors of the Fuda Cancer Hospital in Guangzhou.
The President then said he went to China to be circumcised.
Since then, Duterte has called Tatad an “idiot” for using his column to redeem himself from the negative views about his role during Martial Law.
In 1969, the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos appointed Tatad as Minister of Public Information. He gained prominence when he went on air on Sept. 23, 1972, when he announced Proclamation 1081 in which Marcos declared martial law.
