MANILA – A Philippine senator believes that President Rodrigo Duterte’s ‘colourful language’ will not scare off investors.
For as long as President Rodrigo Duterte’s verbal tirades do not “metamorphose” into official state policy, then no great harm is done, “except maybe to our sensitive ears,” Senate Minority Leader Ralph Recto said on Friday.
Recto though acknowledged that there is a need to boost the country’s “global tourism PR drive to negate the bad press we are getting.”
“Investors are not complaining about the President’s bad language. The objects of their ire are bad traffic, bad infrastructure and slow internet,” he said in a statement.
“But this is not to say that we should condone presidential outbursts. I think those close to him should start speaking truth to power and remind him that good statecraft requires the discipline of carefully choosing the right words for the right occasion,” the senator added.
Duterte, who is known for his colourful language, has repeatedly cursed international organisations like the United Nations and the European Union for calling an end to alleged spate of extrajudicial killings in the country since he assumed office barely three months ago.
“I read the condemnation of the European Union against me. I will tell them f*** you. You’re doing it in atonement for your sins,” Duterte said in a recent speech in Davao City.
But Recto remained confident that no amount of the President’s invectives could drive away businessmen from the Philippines.
“Hard-nosed investors are attracted by incentives, and are not easily repelled by invectives. They go to where money can be made, and the Philippine is an irresistible large market of over 100 million consumers,” he said.
“The leader of the land where they’ll be sinking their money in can drop ‘F’ bombs for all they care. In search for the almighty profit, business will go where it can be made, even to places where real bombs explode on a daily basis.”
“What is, however, impolite to investors are the abrupt changes in rules. What is inelegant language to them are the rules of red tape,” Recto said.
He said investors could probably live with a president, who constantly curses, for as long as government policies are consistent, and contracts, except fraudulent ones, are honoured and for as long as the rules of business are predictable.
“A president’s colourful language is not a risk to be managed. Trading does not stop because the president has again thrown a tantrum,” the senator said.
