‘No time to feed UN experts to crocs’

Malacañang believes President Rodrigo Duterte is not likely to fulfill his threat to feed United Nations (UN) experts to crocodiles as “there will be no occasion to push them.”

“I don’t think he’s in a position to do it (throw UN envoys to crocodiles). Come on. They’re not even being allowed to investigate. There will be no occasion to push them to crocodiles,” Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque Jr. said in a press conference.

Roque said Duterte merely gave an “appropriate response” when he made the threat.

He said the President could not be blamed for his latest pronouncement, since UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein’s previous remark that Duterte undergo “psychiatric evaluation” was insulting.

“It’s an appropriate response to a remark that as I said, should have not been made by a sitting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,” he told a press conference. “The statement made by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is being treated very seriously. It’s being treated as a diplomatic affront. It’s wholly unacceptable.”

Roque came to Duterte’s defense after the latter, in a speech delivered in Zamboanga City on March 10, threatened UN special rapporteurs who will investigate his bloody war on drugs to “throw them to the crocodiles.” /