MANILA (UCAN): “As president, don’t you think you should be a role model for good manners and right conduct? I hope that you will change your attitude. Then maybe I will respect you more,” Skye, a 9-year-old boy from Baguio City, wrote to the country’s president, Rodrigo Duterte.
People should respect and must be polite with one another, the boy said.
“At home, we are told to respect one another. There are words that we are not allowed to say. Sometimes I hear you (Duterte) on television. I am shocked at how you curse and badmouth others,” he added.
Duterte is known for his use of profanities even in the presence of foreign dignitaries at international conferences. He once said such language was necessary when telling people in the southern city of Davao, where he was mayor before becoming president, to carry out his orders.
“It’s not even a crime,” he told foreign dignitaries during an Asia Pacific Regional Conference in Pasay City in 2019 in which he also said he was “not schooled in statesmanship.”
He has even used profanities when attacking Church leaders.
“Even if you say b******, they don’t respond anymore. That is—that is how to win the war against the Catholic Church. All you have to say, m***** f*****. You’re a winner,” he told members of the Philippine Baptist Church in January last year.
‘At home, we are told to respect one another. There are words that we are not allowed to say. Sometimes I hear you (Duterte) on television. I am shocked at how you curse and badmouth others’
Young Skye was unconvinced. His mother explained that her son wrote the letter as part of a school assignment and that she was very surprised when she read it.
“He was asked to write a letter to our dear president … Our children are also aware of how a good leader should lead a country. God bless the Philippines,” Skye’s mother told the Baguio Chronicle.
She also said Skye was homeschooling because of the Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, so had watched the president giving speeches on television on occasions.
Many people praised the child’s letter.
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“Awareness of what is wrong and correct at this early age … indicates what kind of values he will have in his future. The next generation of Filipinos can surely by hopeful because of someone like him. I wish there were more Skyes in our country to call out erring leaders,” said Jab Cordero, who is from Manila.
Another doubted whether Duterte would ever change his ways.
“He will not change. As the saying goes, you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. An old dog like him? Next to impossible,” Geraldine De Leon, a parish worker in Quezon City, said.
