First date: Duterte no-show in interview with Kris

President Rodrigo Duterte. AP

Did President Duterte snub TV host Kris Aquino who was supposed to interview him on Friday?

Aquino’s interview with the President was supposed to mark her TV comeback, but Mr. Duterte skipped the summit of micro, small and medium enterprises in Davao City on Friday, pleading ill health.

He was not feeling well, Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said of President Duterte’s absence at the event he was supposed to cohost with Aquino, the youngest sister of former President Benigno Aquino III. But the TV host made light of the development during the televised event: “Sometimes, first dates don’t push through,” she quipped.

She also noted that in her job, it sometimes happens that costars get sick. “But I don’t know if it’s because of the situation this week that I was snubbed,” she said, referring to the Supreme Court decision on Tuesday to allow the burial of  authoritarian President Ferdinand Marcos at Libingan ng mga Bayani, rejecting the opposition to it by martial law victims and survivors and their families.

Aquino’s mother, the late President Corazon Aquino, defeated Marcos in the 1986 snap election and led the Edsa People Power Revolution that ousted him and drove the Marcos family into US exile.

Mr. Duterte promised a hero’s burial for Marcos during his election campaign. He later acknowledged that Marcos’ daughter, Imee, had contributed to his campaign.

Despite the recent Marcos burial controversy that again pitted the Aquinos and the Marcoses, the TV host appealed to the President: “President Duterte, please give me a chance. I hope one day mamahalin mo rin ako (you’d learn to love me, too),” she said.

When she learned about the President’s absense from the summit, Aquino said she asked her brother, former President Aquino, if she should push through with the event.  With no cohost, she was alone. What should she do, she asked him.

“He said, you made a commitment. You are there for ‘Go Negosyo.’ You are there because you believe in the Philippine economy. And you are there because you want everybody to be included in the growth of our economy,” Aquino quoted her brother. “So let’s push through with this,” the TV host said.