Senator Ronald Dela Rosa said Wednesday the United States Embassy in Manila had told him his cancelled visa might be restored—even as Senate President Vicente Sotto told a forum later that the visa’s revocation did not sit well with United States President Donald Trump.
He told ANC that he received a call from the US embassy after President Rodrigo Duterte and Trump had talked. But he did not say who called him from the embassy and when the call took place.
“After COVID when their staff go back to work, they will invite me, they will ask me to go there to fix my visa,” Dela Rosa said.
He said he would be going to the US embassy to attend to his US visa once the health situation stabilized.
Dela Rosa’s visa was canceled because of his alleged involvement in the extrajudicial killings when he was chief of police during the early months of the Duterte administration.
When asked if he thought the move to restore his visa prodded the Philippine government not to terminate the Visiting Forces Agreement with the US, Dela Rosa said he did not know.
“To be frank, my take from that is after they talked, the two Presidents of the US and the Philippines, they had an understanding,” Dela Rosa said.
“Maybe the American President gave instructions to fix [my] visa, so the US Embassy called me.”
Sotto said Duterte had told him and some Executive officials in a meeting a “few weeks ago” what Trump had thought about Dela Rosa’s cancelled visa.
“He talked with President Trump. There’s a word used by President Trump. I won’t repeat it but the President [Duterte] related it to us,” Sotto said.
“Those … people from the State Department, he [Trump] said. They shouldn’t have done that in the first place.
“So it was surprising that they told Senator Dela Rosa they will return or renew his visa because President Trump himself did not agree with what happened.”
Sotto said Duterte did not say if the willingness of the US government to restore Dela Rosa’s visa was in any way connected to the VFA’s suspension.