Word war in Davao: Polong vs Isabelle

DAVAO CITY—Where is the word war between the President’s eldest son and his daughter heading?

Netizens have joined the social media quarrel of Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte and her daughter Isabelle, with some of the President’s supporters siding with the father, telling the daughter that she was still a child and she should respect her father, even if she disagreed with him.

Others took the side of Isabelle, with one netizen saying that Paolo had “no manners” in response to his Facebook post scolding his daughter.

“Whatever issues [they] had, they should have talked about it in private,” said one netizen on Facebook.

“Why wash your dirty linen in public?” asked another.

The heated exchange started on Friday when Isabelle, Paolo’s daughter by his former wife Lovelie Sangkola, posted on her Twitter account an apparent outrage as she spoke of how he should not physically hurt somebody “just because you have a position in the city.”

“It’s not that if you have power, you can already hurt people,” she wrote in Cebuano.

Isabelle added: “The one you’re touching is also human! Not only human but a child!” she said.

It was not clear if Paolo had physically hurt his daughter.

In another post, Isabelle spoke of how her father “fucks up my Christmas every year.”

In response to that, Paolo told Isabelle to “fix your fucking life first before I will stop ‘fucking up’ your Christmas every year.”—ALLAN NAWAL