Palace on cheer, cases vs Duterte: ‘It’s a free country’

Manila - Malacañang shrugged off Monday the anti-administration cheer routine that went viral online and the threat of a lawyers’ group to file cases against President Rodrigo Duterte after his term ends in 2022.

“It’s a free country,” Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said during his press conference at the Palace on Monday, October 21, 2019.

On the performance of cheering squad Skimmers in the University of the Philippines Visayas in Iloilo, Panelo said the cheers and yells that they chanted were apparently a joke.

Among the team’s yells was: “Let’s kill this president. Charot!”

“They can dish out jokes, criticisms…Eh, si Presidente di ba nagsasabi din sya ng ‘kill’. Baka ginagaya lang nila si Presidente (The President also says ‘kill’. They are probably just emulating the President),” Panelo said.

Simulating a news broadcast, the Skimmers cheer routine featured “news reports” about the haze from Indonesia and the Amazon forest fires, sexual harassment, inequality in the UP system, 2020 budget cut for UP, lack of facilities at the UP Visayas, red-tagging of UP students, territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea, move to revive the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program, Sogie bill, drug war, dengue vaccination program, fake news, rice tariffication and the dismal state of Philippine media.

Their satirical cheers branded Duterte as “tuta” (puppet) of China and dubbed the Philippines a province of China.

Just as the cheering squad has freedom of expression, Duterte supporters who harassed and threatened the team online are also allowed to express their anger over this cheer routine, Panelo said.

“Syempre, natural lang yon na mag-react sila. Syempre ang dating sa kanila na hindi sila nagbibiro or kunwari, nagbibiro sila pero talagang binabanatan nila si Presidente. This (is) a very natural reaction for the supporters of the President,” he added.

(It’s natural for them to react. Of course, it would seem that the Skimmers are not joking. Or they appeared to be joking, but were actually criticizing the President.)