The youngest son of presidential aspirant and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte defended his father from criticisms that latter would be a dictator should he win in the upcoming national elections.
Sebastian “Baste” Duterte on Friday said his father was someone who has a “soft heart for the poor” and “loves his city so much.”
“They say he is a dictator. They say that if he wins the presidency, he will declare martial law. They say that he is a murderer. If that is true then I must have been raised by a different person because the Rodrigo Duterte that I know told me to go out and share my blessings,” the younger Duterte told graduating students of Lyceum of the Philippines University in Batangas.
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The 28-year-old Duterte, who was invited to speak in a job orientation seminar, said his father taught him to share his blessings to the less fortunate at a very young age.
“My father is not running just because he wants to be the president of the Philippines. He is running because he wants to send us Filipinos a message, that there could be a better tomorrow for all of us,” he said. “He is telling us that we should reach out for one another. He is telling us that we have to reach out to expand humanity, especially for the poor, the marginalized and the incapacitated.”
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The younger Duterte added that the Rodrigo Duterte he knows “loves his city as if it was his own child.”
“He told me to treat everyone with equal respect… From the time I was born until I was 10 years old, we live in an area in Davao City that was surrounded by poverty. While we were there my father told me to go out and share my toys with the other kids,” he said.
The tough-talking mayor, known for his iron-fist style of leadership and approach toward crime, has often been criticized as human rights violator for his public declarations that he had killed criminals in Davao. CDG
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