Her father’s daughter

THE GRADUATE President Duterte and partner Honeylet Avanceña congratulate Kitty on her elementary school graduation. —PHOTO FROM BONG GO

What a difference a year makes.

From a doe-eyed tween who held the Bible at President Rodrigo  Duterte’s inaugural on June 30 last year, Veronica “Kitty” Duterte has bloomed into a “slay queen” on Instagram and a “goddess” on Facebook.

The youngest among the President’s four children — and his only daughter with common-law partner Cielito “Honeylet” Avanceña — Kitty is  “gwapa” (pretty), “gorg” (gorgeous), and the embodiment of “cuteness” to her adoring fans who call themselves “Kittynators,” “KittyWarriors,” “KittySquad” and “KittyLovers,” among other tags on their social media fan pages.

And so far, Kitty has proven as controversial as Kris Aquino, the youngest sister of former President Benigno Aquino III who became known for being “taklesa” (tactless) in her candid pronouncements.

A lot of the heat generated by President Duterte’s daughter these days has to do with social media, where anonymity easily sinks discourse into depths of vulgarity and outrage.

As another presidential daughter recalled, things were different in Malacañang six decades ago.

“We were not aware of what was going on in the executive department. We just went about our business of going to school and going home,” recounted Mila Magsaysay-Valenzuela, one of the three children of the late President Ramon Magsaysay.  “The only thing that changed was that we were given one security guard each,” she added.

No fake news

Life was simpler, Valenzuela said. “There was no social media, no fake news, no trolls.”

In contrast, Kitty’s recent post on Instagram became viral when she turned fierce and bared her fangs at a basher who described her foreign trips with her father as “taxpayers vacation.”

“The President had important business there. He was working and we went with him. He was working and earning. You’re shameless,” Kitty hit back.

Official account

The 13-year-old has 266,000 followers on her Instagram. There are 41 other “Kitty Duterte” IG accounts created by her fans.

On Facebook, Kitty’s official account has 254,000 “likes,” which grow by several hundreds daily. Some 40 other Kitty Duterte FB accounts were created by fans and ardent followers.

A few years ago, a video of her washing clothes in a tub at home while her grandmother sang, “Veronica labandera (washer woman)” went viral. Her more recent video in December, musical.ly vid, registered 143,513 views. Another video made with Boomerang was viewed 208,627 times.

Although Kitty’s post defending her father’s foreign trips showed her talking tough like him, she apparently has his self-deprecating humor as well. In throwback pictures of herself as a chubby little girl, she wrote: “TB (Throwback) to when I was a super fat greasy pig…”

A series of photos showing her as a pink-clad toddler had this caption: “lmao I obviously has a thing for this kinda crap since I was little.”

Relationship with mom

For those unfamiliar with internet slang, lmao means “laughing my ass off.”

On Mother’s Day, Kitty offered a peek into her relationship with her mom. “To the strongest and bravest woman I know, one minute mag war tayo and tapunan ng gamit (we’re at war and throwing stuff around) and the other purocuddles, hugs and kisses … ”

Kitty, who had just finished 6th grade with honors in Chinese and in current events, does not live in Malacañang but stays in Davao with her mother. Avanceña was quoted in another interview as saying that she would do her best to shield her daughter from the public eye. After all, she was only 12, an impressionable age, when she became a presidential daughter and heir to public scrutiny.

Growing up in the public eye is never easy. Just ask former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who was 14 when she first lived in Malacañang with her father, former President Diosdado Macapagal, and Irene Marcos-Araneta, who was 5 at President Marcos’ inaugural in 1965.