Badoy hits Hontiveros’ ‘treason’ remarks on Duterte-China’s gentleman’s agreement

Former Presidential Communications Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy slammed Senator Risa Hontiveros’ labeling of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s supposed “gentleman’s agreement” with China concerning the improvement of the Philippine naval ship, BRP Sierra Madre, grounded on Ayungin Shoal.

“Is Senator Rosa Hontiveros being willfully obtuse by labeling as ‘treasonous’ the former President’s peaceful engagements with China or is she just being her usual obtuse self?” Badoy said after Hontiveros filed a resolution seeking a Senate inquiry on the supposed agreement, which she described as an “act of treason.”

Badoy said Hontiveros should look at the definition of treason from the dictionary, before throwing the word to some.

“Does Senator Hontiveros not know that in order for treason to occur, it has to first exist in a backdrop of war? Here’s an Oxford Dictionary, Risa. Sit down before you hurt yourself,” she said. 

She also defended Duterte’s move to engage in a “gentleman’s agreement” with China, an agreement that prohibits the Philippines from bringing construction materials and repairing the BRP Sierra Madre, which was recently disclosed by former Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque. 

“Does a Senator of the land really and truly not know that the Philippine President is the Chief Architect of our Foreign Policy and that President Rodrigo Roa Duterte was well within his rights to maneuver—in any way he saw fit—our engagements with China?,” Badoy stressed. 

Badoy claimed that Duterte’s foreign policy has been effective for the country as well as for the push for peace and stability in the region.

“For all of those years President Rodrigo Roa Duterte called the shots, peace and progress reigned not just in our country but in the entire ASEAN region and this part of the world,” she said. 

Badoy labeled Hontiveros as one of the “low caliber officials” including President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. “who seem totally incapable of fully understanding diplomatic nuance and the kind of leadership that employs cunning and every diplomatic trick in the book to defend and protect our people.”

“War is the ultimate failure of leadership and the clowns we have before us—Hontiveros and Marcos—are dismal, abysmal failures in leadership,” she added.

Badoy said Hontiveros seemed “determined  to take down the wildly popular, highly trusted former President while vigorously fanning anti-China sentiments—a page straight out of the political playbook of rotten politicians in our midst- because, well, Risa Hontiveros is one herself.”