Some words you take at face value, some with a grain of salt. Some you brush off and dismiss. Others, you object to and demand an apology for.
Some words are just so reprehensible there is neither excuse nor redemption.
We condemn in the strongest terms the words of presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte who trivialized the rape and murder of an Australian missionary 27 years ago.
The mayor of Davao City described the woman as being so beautiful that she looked like an actress. “What a waste,” he remembered thinking. “They raped her, they lined up. I was angry because she was raped, that’s one thing. But she was so beautiful, the mayor should have been first,” he said to a cheering crowd of supporters in an April 12 rally.
Duterte’s supporters insist that their candidate is the only one who could restore peace and order in the country. The mayor himself has talked about giving criminals what they deserved—the ultimate punishment of death. In fact, dealing with the fallout of his chilling statement—likely a window into his thoughts—he babbled on about ordering the killing of the men who had raped and killed the woman.
“It is my style. It is my mouth. I said that in the heat of anger but [you should] listen to the story behind it,” he said. But what story?
Duterte makes a leap in logic by attacking his rivals who speak better than he did, and dared the people to vote for those who spoke good English but stole or did nothing while in office.
All the efforts at damage control fail. What was done in 1989 is not the issue, but what was said on April 12. If the mayor felt so strongly against criminals, then why did he express the intention to be one of—indeed, be the first in line among—them? Nobody should ever joke about rape.
Many have joined the chorus of condemnation against the frontrunner in the presidential race: Women’s groups, social media users, and his rivals in the contest who for once found something to be united against. In the meantime, Duterte’s handlers must be banging their heads on a wall thinking how they could arrest the mayor’s self-destruction.
This is just the campaign—imagine our horror and humiliation if he were president.
Duterte says only his mouth is foul. With this latest slip, we do not believe for a second that the rest of him is not stuck in the gutter, if not somewhere even lower.