De Lima: Palace discourse will worsen

Senator Leila De Lima INQUIRER/ MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

It’s all downhill from here.

Detained Sen. Leila de Lima on Sunday said she expected the discourse from Malacañang to deteriorate even further with the replacement of presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella, whom she referred to as a “decent” public servant.

“With the departure of Secretary Abella, I fear the even further decline of the level of discourse and language we could expect from now on from the President and his men. Truly, God save our country,” De Lima said in a statement.

The senator noted how Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Secretary Martin Andanar and chief presidential legal counsel Salvador Panelo received flak recently for making off-color jokes.

“These days our well-preserved values are being corrupted, contaminated and thrown into the garbage by some random dirty old men like Salvador Panelo, who make the most inappropriately disgusting jokes during an interview he was giving as a government official,” De Lima said.

In a recent interview with Swiss National Radio, Panelo joked that he “fucks his clothes,” but later explained that he meant he “packs” his clothes — a play on Filipinos’ confusion of their F’s and P’s.

She also scored Andanar for joking before overseas Filipino workers in the United Kingdom that European Union officials critical of President Duterte “lacked sex.”

“But their actions and apparent mental state seem to be symptomatic of a prevalent corrupted mind-set in our so-called government officials today: Why be right when you can be wrong? Why be a good public servant when you can be a bad one? After all, even the President seems to get away with it,” she said.

De Lima said Andanar and Panelo had “no place in a civilized society, much less in the ranks of Philippine government officialdom.” –Philip C. Tubeza