Cayetano slams Trillanes for US trip

Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano yesterday said Sen. Antonio Trillanes’ latest trip to Washington D.C., “doesn’t help the country when there’s misinformation, disinformation, especially false information.”

Cayetano was reacting to reports that Trillanes had met with US Senators Marco Rubio (R-Florida), John McCain (R-Arizona) and Bill Nelson (D-Florida) during his visit to the Capitol Hill Tuesday afternoon (Wednesday morning in Manila).

He said he was only made aware about the Trillanes trip, “first by post of some people and later on by Sen. Rubio’s press and now everyone is talking about it.”

“All I can say is, although it’s a free world, it doesn’t help the country when there’s misinformation, disinformation, especially false information,” Cayateno told reporters at the sidelines of the High Level Forum of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Pasay City.

Short of calling the Trillanes trip a part of destabilization plot, Cayetano pointed out that while he himself had been a staunch critic of some presidents, “I’ve never gone abroad to ask for help to topple them.”

“That’s the speculation now but as I said, DFA doesn’t deal with speculation. Unless we have the confirmation, we will assume that is in good faith and that is a normal engagement,” Cayetano said of the senator’s Washington trip.

Trillanes’ visit to the US capitol came at a time when the Philippines is in the thick of preparations for the ASEAN Summit next month, where more than a dozen of world leaders, including US President Trump, are expected to attend.

Cayetano said some of the people that Trillanes have met so far are exactly the same people whom they have offered to meet to explain the Philippine government side, an apparent reference to prickly issues such as the extrajudicial killings and human rights.

“Same people that he went to meet are the same people that we offered to engage and to show them the real numbers and get their staffers and meet our staffers and talk about it,” he said.

Cayetano admitted that he was not able to meet with Rubio when he was in the US last month. Rubio “said he was busy in the Florida situation,” he chief said.

Rubio represents Florida, one of the states battered by Hurricane Harvey last September 3.