Palace calls Duterte ‘a one-man fake news factory’
MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang did not mince words in responding to former president Rodrigo Duterte’s claim that President Marcos is veering toward a dictatorship.
Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin assailed Duterte for his bloody crackdown on drugs and alleged penchant for false information.
“We will not backslide into the oppressive ways of the previous administration, when critics were jailed on trumped-up charges and when kill orders were publicly issued with glee and obeyed blindly,” Bersamin said in a statement issued yesterday.
“It is the leader of that troubled past who is depicting us as veering toward a system where anyone can be deprived of life, liberty and property without due process of law, as many had been on his mere say-so as a tyrant who did not respect the rights of the people,” he added.
Bersamin dismissed Duterte’s claim as a mere tall tale.
“This hoax is another budol emerging from a one-man fake-news factory,” he said.
At a rally in Mandaue City last Saturday, Duterte, whose family has had a falling out with the Marcoses over several issues, predicted that the President would not step down in 2028 and would impose martial law like his late father and namesake Ferdinand Marcos.
The elder Marcos placed the Philippines under military rule in 1972, citing “lawless elements” who have taken up arms against the duly constituted government and the people, and who have committed “acts of armed insurrection and rebellion.”
The late president was ousted through the military-backed 1986 EDSA revolt, which forced him and his family to live in exile in Hawaii.
Bersamin assured the public that the Marcos administration would “stay the course in upholding the Constitution, in adhering to the rule of law and in respecting the rights of the people.”
In an interview with Australia’s ABC News in March 2024, Marcos said he has no impulses to authoritarianism and that he has never been tempted to impose it on the Philippines.
“We have a good system going. I think we’ve learned to, we have a Constitution … that we have gone by for the last 36 years now. We are making, hoping to make some changes to it but, no, I have not felt any tug or temptation to make it a more authoritarian system,” the President said.
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