Apologies

The capacity to make a public apology speaks much about the character of a man. The University of the Philippines community is still waiting for UP president Danilo Concepcion to apologize and not just express “deep regret” for his “appearance” at a 43rd anniversary reunion of the youth group Kabataang Barangay that was formed during Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law regime.

Concepcion was a KB chapter head and has so far resisted the calls for an apology for the party held at the UP Bahay ng Alumni in Diliman and attended by the dictator’s eldest daughter Imee.

Unlike Concepcion, President Duterte in recent weeks has been apologizing in public or rectifying previous statements. He apologized for calling God “stupid” and tried to explain the context in which the remark was made. Meeting with the Filipino community in Israel this week, he said sorry for cursing former US president Barack Obama, who had criticized his bloody campaign against illegal drugs.

Also in Israel, President Duterte corrected the impression created by his statement likening himself to Adolf Hitler in the war on drugs. This time, visiting the Holocaust Museum with his daughter Sara, whose mother belongs to a family of German Jews who escaped the Holocaust by going to the US, Duterte likened Hitler to Satan. Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin reminded him that Hitler’s Nazi regime exterminated six million Jews.

Women’s groups are still waiting for President Duterte to apologize for making light of reports that rape cases were highest in his home city of Davao. At a public gathering, the President joked that this was because there were many beautiful women in the city. But rape is never a joking matter.

His daughter Sara who is city mayor gave an appropriate response: many of the cases, she noted, were incestuous rape. So the law enforcement problem is being addressed in coordination with welfare and family counseling personnel.

Duterte has dismissed his intemperate remarks as mere “talkatese.” But intemperate remarks can cause harm. A government official must learn the virtue of prudence when making public pronouncements. This is true especially of the nation’s highest official. National leaders are expected to be able to exercise self-discipline more than the average citizen, in both word and deed.