The irrepressible President Rodrigo Duterte was his usual self Sunday, this time threatening to pull the country out of the United Nations after the international body criticized the extra-judicial killings that supposedly accompanied his war on crime.
“Maybe we’ll just have to decide to separate from the UN. If you are that disrespectful, son of a whore, then I will just leave you,” the President said during a dawn press conference in his hometown over the weekend.
By Monday, however, the Palace had done some damage control, saying the Philippines would not leave the UN “despite profound frustrations and disappointments.”
The Palace said the President was only asserting national sovereignty after the international body “singled out” Mr. Duterte’s campaign against crime, including illegal drugs.
The UN and other human rights groups have raised alarm over the killing of more than 1,500 people, since Mr. Duterte won the May elections. Its special rapporteur on summary executions said the promise of immunity and bounty to those who killed drug suspects violated international law.
The President said he wants to get back the contributions to the UN since it joined in 1945 and use the money to build rehabilitation centers for drug dependents. He may even want to set up a rival group, to which he would invite China and the African nations.
Mr. Duterte’s derision for the UN is not new. Earlier this year, he also cursed at UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon for condemning “his apparent endorsement of extra-judicial killings which is illegal and a breach of fundamental rights and freedoms.”
The President said Ban could not even solve the Middle East carnage and lift a finger in Africa.
Mr. Duterte has also attacked the UN for its hypocrisy in encouraging developing countries to cut back on their carbon emissions when it is the industrialized countries who have been historically responsible for climate change.
And now Palace officials are saying, as they have said countless times before, that the President’s words created an impression different from that he had intended.
With the tough talk and the consequent backpedaling, the President only succeeds in making himself look silly. It diminishes whatever inherent qualities he may have as a national leader and global statesman. What the outbursts reveal is a strong tendency to feel slighted at even valid criticism, a lack of openness to hear contrarian views, a desire to quell opposition at whatever cost —and a sore absence of restraint that allows a leader to make difficult but necessary decisions.