Palace hits US group for meddling
Malacañang called out the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for meddling in the affairs of the Philippines, saying they, along with other critics of President Duterte, should shake off their colonial mentality.
Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo made the statement after the San Francisco Board of Supervisors condemned the Philippine government’s
campaign against illegal drugs, expressed support to Senator Leila de Lima and Rappler CEO Maria Ressa, and urged the withdrawal of financial aid to the Philippines.
In a statement Sunday morning, Panelo called the body’s resolution as an “unacceptable intrusion” to the country’s sovereignty.
“The resolution is a toxic and unacceptable intrusion to our legal processes and an outrageous interference with our country’s sovereignty,” he said.
“Like some US senators, the San Francisco Supervisors have either developed an amnesia or have not outgrown their colonial mentality. They should be shaken from their stupor and wake up to the fact that the Philippines had long ceased to be a colony of the United States and will never be a vassal to it,” he added.
Panelo also wondered why people like the Supervisors would believe in the lies being peddled by critics of the administration who fail to convince the people to turn against the President.
“It is astonishingly incredible and amazingly perplexing why men and women of arts and letters such as the San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors could believe the false narratives as well as the bogus statistics cited in the Duterte Administration’s drug war, fed to them by biased news agencies, anti-Duterte trolls and a biased alleged labor and environmental activist from San Francisco and Richmond,” he said.
“The few vociferous anti-Duterte personalities turn to foreign politicians or international human rights groups vulnerable to misinformation and gullible to untruthful narrations against this Administration, who then either unwittingly lend hand to – or ignorantly parrot – the detractors’ pretended patriotism and politically motivated advocacy,” he added.