PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday again attacked former President Benigno Aquino III and Senator Grace Poe, calling his predecessor as someone “bereft of emotional stability” and taunted Poe as a “sore loser.”
In a hastily called briefing in Malacañang on Monday night, Duterte lambasted his predecessor for his alleged insensitivity after criticizing his bloody war on drugs, “which has yet to produce results.”
“When a person is bereft of emotional stability, he talks that way. Son of a b****,” Duterte said.
“You should be… Look at the people who died [because of drugs]—millions—and you are one of the responsible officials of—as a matter of fact, the highest [during your term] but nothing happened.”
Duterte likewise slammed Poe for telling the President to watch his mouth.
“My mouth since then was bad and even my character… but where are you now? You landed in fourth spot. Whose at number one? Me,” Duterte said.
“The one who’s cursing, blurting all of that son of a b****. What do you want? Why did you lose [the election?].”
Poe, who ran for President but lost to Duterte, finished at third spot behind former Interior secretary Manuel Roxas II but still ahead of former vice president Jejomar Binay and the late senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago.
Contrary to some reports [not in this newspaper], and Duterte’s own words, Poe said she merely wanted to remind the President as she was confident that “he knows what is right and wrong.”
“That has been his style. But of of course, as a public figure being heard by children, you might be emulated. Do we agree to that?” Poe said.
Duterte’s attacks didn’t stop even after he called Poe a loser, chiding her for being too reliant on her adoptive father’s surname and also accusing her of being a drunkard and a chain smoker.
“If the Filipino wants the prim and proper [President] without the cursing, why did you lose? You have all the money, you had the aura of… [but] your only capital is you’re father’s surname,” Duterte said of Poe.
“All of us have defects. But yours? You’re a chain smoker, the Filipino never knew. You’re a heavy drinker [of] brandy. That’s true. That is your secret. Me? I don’t have secrets. I spew them out… You admonish me as if you are the mother.”
He even jested: “You’re popular, you had all the campaign money. You’re the one blessed by the Church”•they even made a prayer for you. Hail Mary, full of Grace.”
The senator’s statement came after Duterte branded Aquino as “stupid” for claiming that he saw no progress in the administration’s war on illegal drugs.