Envoy goes on charm offensive in Leyte

TACLOBAN CITY—The mood was celebratory when US Ambassador Sung Kim turned over nine classrooms, built using US government funds, to teachers and children in the town of Palo, Leyte province, as part of the United States’ aid commitment to survivors of the world’s strongest supertyphoon, “Yolanda.”

In a speech during the turnover of the classrooms, Kim made no mention of President Duterte’s rants against the United States, including a remark calling former US President Barack Obama a “son of a whore.”

“We will not change ever, we will continue to be your friend and supporter,” said Kim as he turned over six classrooms to the Anahaway National High School and three classrooms for the Anahaway Elementary School in the village of Anahaway in Palo, one of the areas worst hit by Yolanda in 2013.

Mr. Duterte had started charting a foreign policy leaning away from the United States and toward China, accusing the US of unfairly treating its Third World allies.

The numbers, however, would show a continuing flow of aid from the United States to the Philippines.

P7B in aid

The US government has poured in a total of $143 million (around P7 billion) to the Philippines as aid for Yolanda victims.

These funds financed the construction of more than 300 school rooms, 237 of which are in different towns in Leyte and 27 in Tacloban City, considered the ground zero of Yolanda.

The classrooms turned over by Kim in Anahaway would benefit at least 860 students.

Kim said the alliance between the two countries was deep and would remain strong “in the years and decades to come.”

“The US and the Philippines have had a close partnership, very close friendship and very strong alliance for many, many years,” he said.

“In fact, the US-Philippines alliance is the longest alliance we have in the whole Pacific region,” he told reporters in a brief interview.

The presence of at least four million Filipinos living and working in the United States and 300,000 Americans staying in the Philippines showed “the depth of our ties,” Kim said.

“We have the deepest possible friendship between the people of two countries,” he said.

He said this friendship drove a “strong military partnership.”

“We want to make sure that the foundation of people-to-people ties, the deep friendship between Americans and Filipinos, will continue in the years and decades to come,” Kim said.