Duterte-media ties likened to lovers’ spat

It’s nothing more than a lovers’ spat and they’ll kiss and make up sooner or later.

That’s how Senate President Franklin Drilon sees the strained relationship between President-elect Rodrigo Duterte and the media.

Duterte has warned reporters, “Don’t f—k with me” and announced he would not give any more press conferences during his entire six-year term after he wolf-whistled a TV reporter and subsequently got slammed for sexual harassment.

Drilon is optimistic the tiff will be resolved.

“This is one thing I can say: both the Office of the President and the media need each other,” Drilon said at the Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum.

“I am certain that this will come to pass and we will all realize that both the Office of the President and the media will have to work with each other for the sake of our democracy,” he added.

He himself used to work in the Office of the President, as the executive secretary of former President Corazon Aquino, and had dealt with the press back then.

Grizzled journalists say that democracy is served best when the so-called Fourth Estate maintains its adversarial affair with people in power so that, unfettered, it can shine a light in the dark and expose wrongdoing.

Drilon is one of the senators who would join the Senate majority in the 17th Congress. Majority of the senators are generally supportive of the Duterte administration’s legislative agenda, he said.