Duterte Says God Got Him To Stop Swearing

God spoke to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on a flight from Japan on Thursday. The president said he has promised to stop swearing after God warned him that the plane would crash if he kept using foul language.

The former mayor is known for profanity that has included flare-ups targeted at U.S. President Barack Obama and Pope Francis. He said he heard a voice and recognized it was God, telling him to clean up his act.

Duterte appeared at a news conference on Thursday upon arrival in his home city of Davao. He said he was looking at the skies while he was on the flight home. Everybody was asleep but a voice said that, “you know, if you don’t stop epithets, I will bring this plane down now”.

“And I said, ‘who is this?’ So, of course, it’s God. OK.

“So, I promise God … not to express slang, cuss words and everything.”

Duterte appeared as an aggressive, insensitive, alternative candidate in a May election which he won by a big margin. He owed much of his success to his unsophisticated style and promises to attack problems vital to ordinary people, like crime and drugs.

Once he took office, he was advised to act more presidential. However, it was an advice not heeded for long. Duterte continued his eruptions of profanity with passion when he began hearing foreign criticism of his deadly war on drugs.

 

He has called U.S. President Barack Obama a “son of a bitch”. He also used the same words in disparaging the pope.

He called U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a “devil”, he told Obama to “go to hell”, and said “fuck you” twice to the European Union, while raising his middle finger.

Duterte also used the same language in Tokyo on Tuesday when talking about his annoyance with foreign criticism of his drug war.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said that Duterte is certainly entitled to his opinions about his own relationship with a supreme being.” However, he declined to say whether Duterte’s promise might make it easier to deal with him.

Duterte’s foreign affairs adviser Alan Peter Cayetano said that the president was tired and seemed preoccupied during the flight back from Japan.

Cayetano told reporters on Friday that Duterte felt it was a message from God.

He said that he always felt that Duterte is a deeply spiritual person. He’s not religious, but he believes in God, he added.

The Philippines is largely Roman Catholic.

 

 

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