"This is something to bear in mind."
“Tell me who you walk with, and I’ll tell you who you are.”
These words from the Puerto Rican author Esmeralda Santiago are well worth considering as the 2022 elections draw near.
Certainly, it is well worth considering that the man that the President sees as his spiritual adviser and friend, the self-proclaimed “Appointed Son of God,” has just been indicted by the US Justice Department for trafficking girls and women and forcing them to have sex with him under the threat of “eternal damnation.”
The victims, aged 12 to 25, were recruited from the Philippines and brought to the United States to work as “pastorals” who cleaned Apollo Quiboloy’s residences, gave him massages and had sex with him as “night duty.”
Quiboloy and the administrators of his organization coerced pastorals into performing “night duty” — that is, have sex with him “under the threat of physical and verbal abuse and eternal damnation,” the US indictment says.
Three of the nine people indicted have already been arrested, but Quiboloy, who maintains large residences in Hawaii, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, is thought to be in Davao City, hometown and bailiwick of President Duterte.
Although his Justice secretary has said they will cooperate with the US if it seeks extradition, the President himself has been silent so far on the travails of his good friend, who in a get-together in August this year prayed over the Chief Executive’s head and declared that “God is happy with our President.”
In 2019, Mr. Duterte said he believed Quiboloy stopped an earthquake that struck Mindanao by simply yelling at it.
Duterte, who makes no secret of his close ties to Quiboloy, said he believes the evangelist’s claim and sees nothing wrong about it.
“I believed in Pastor Quiboloy,” Duterte was quoted as saying in 2019. “When he said stop, and the earthquake stopped, what’s the trouble?” he said in a mix of English and Filipino.
The President even said he hoped he could possess Quiboloy’s “power” so he could order corrupt government officials to stop.
Today, almost six years after he was elected to office, it is apparent that Mr. Duterte does not possess the power to stop corruption in his own government.
In the face of irregularities in his administration’s purchase of billions of pesos worth of pandemic supplies, Mr. Duterte has chosen to defend questionable deals and the former government official who was responsible for them. He has also repeatedly defended his former economic adviser—a Chinese national–who bankrolled the small start-up that bagged almost P12 billion in government contracts for face masks and face shields.ß
This, then, is the company that the President keeps. It is something to bear in mind as he runs for the Senate and offers his endorsement to the people who have enabled him.
