Noy downplays Duterte’s threat to abolish Congress

MANILA, Philippines – President Aquino has dismissed presidential candidate Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s threats of abolishing Congress and establishing a revolutionary government, but warned that any serious moves to thwart the country’s freedom could only be done over his dead body.

Speaking in Iloilo City for the administration candidates’ grand rally on Tuesday night, Aquino said disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution by talking about a revolutionary government was sending the wrong message when a campaign was not supposed to be a laughing matter.

“What is going to be the form (of this revolutionary government) once you are there? Is everything that he is saying correct? It seems that in several instances that he spoke, the message was: ‘I’ll be the one to be followed. I am the one who is right. I am the one who is great,’” Aquino said.

The President said he could also not understand why a lawyer like Duterte would talk about abolishing Congress if it would make things difficult for him or impeach him and then establish a revolutionary government with the communists when he knew very well that these could not be done under the Constitution.

“I suppose if ever this becomes a reality, the horror that others are thinking about and someone really acts like a dictator, do you think I can still be at the forefront? Maybe I will be number one in the order of battle,” Aquino said.

“But if that is what’s going to happen to me, then that’s okay. Why? When my father (the late senator Benigno Jr. who fought the Marcos dictatorship) was killed, I told myself I could not bear to see that nothing would change,” the President said, adding that at the time people who fought martial law either were killed or got jailed.

The President said his father and thousands of others fought for freedom and it would be his duty to do everything he could to protect and uphold what they had offered their lives for.

Aquino said after his father’s death, his mother Corazon also risked her life, with the rest of their family, to preserve democracy.

He added that he himself was ambushed in 1987 during a coup attempt against the government of then President Corazon Aquino.

“I still have a bullet in my neck. After 1987 and until now it’s just a bonus (that he is alive). So if that is my fate, then so be it. Let God take care of me if what I did was right. But the most important thing to me is that we are clear (on the country’s direction) when we go to the polling centers,” Aquino said.

Days ahead of the elections, reports said investors had also showed jitters through the financial markets - particularly a weaker peso against the dollar, “significant” underperformance of bonds and slips in the stock market.

The President said he was worried about people getting fooled or swayed by candidates who could seriously tell them where they would lead the country.

He said if people would lose their way, then the country might again suffer another dictatorship that would squander all of the country’s democratic gains.

“So I hope he (Duterte) is not going to literally do the things that he is saying now. What if he would really disregard the Constitution?” Aquino said, noting his mother’s government was not revolutionary in the sense that it trampled on people’s rights.

Aquino said a Constitution was immediately adopted to restore democracy.

He reiterated his appeal to Filipinos not to entertain the idea of having another dictatorship as an answer to the country’s current woes or they would just suffer the consequences.

Aquino said loose or tough talk must not prevail and that those with ill intentions should not be voted into office. – With Delon Porcalla, Alexis Romero