Hontiveros to Duterte: ‘Focus on lowering food prices, not killing senators’

Senator Risa Hontiveros on Saturday rejected former President Rodrigo Duterte's controversial remarks about killing 15 senators to make way for his nine senatorial candidates.

In an interview, Hontiveros, who is backing the candidacy of former senators Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan and Bam Aquino, said the government must prioritize lowering the prices of basic commodities instead of inciting violence.

“Well, what Duterte said about killing 15 senators to make way for his candidates — what really should be killed or bombed or brought down are the prices of goods, right?” she told reporters following a market visit with Pangilinan at Muñoz Market in Quezon City.

“There’s nothing else that should be the focus in this election. That’s how important it is to bring back Senator Kiko Pangilinan and Senator Bam Aquino to the Senate — just for that real issue, which is true unity for our people: lowering food prices, increasing support for agriculture, creating jobs, and policies like those of Senator Kiko Pangilinan," she said.

Asked for her initial reaction, the opposition lawmaker said, "My first reaction — what? What did he say? What else can the people’s reaction be, who are already struggling in life, with the issues being discussed by Sen. Kiko and Sen. Bam.”

“Other people’s answer to these problems is more violence? I really don’t know about them. I will listen to Senator Kiko here,” she stressed.

Duterte on Thursday “joked” about killing 15 senators to vacate more seats for his senatorial candidates.

“Now that there are many of them (aiming for the Senate). What should we do? Why don't we just kill the senators now so we can vacate their seats? If we can kill about 15 senators, we’ll all get in,” he said during the PDP-Laban proclamation rally at Club Filipino in San Juan City.

“But that’s unfortunate. But it's frustrating because, well, not all of them, but talking about opportunities, the only way to do it is to just blow up that them up,” he added.

For his part, Pangilinan echoed Hontiveos’ assertion, noting that the crackdown on cartels responsible for the high rice prices in the market should be prioritized.

"It is really necessary to dismantle these exploitative groups in order to keep rice prices high," he said, adding that the move was instrumental in reducing rice prices during his term as food security secretary under former president Benigno Simeon "Noynoy" Aquino III from June 2014 to September 2015.

"We've done this before. We went after the exploitative traders. We fixed the importation process. We did not agree to buying expensive rice from Vietnam and Thailand. We told them to lower the prices," Pangilinan said.

Within one year, Pangilinan said they successfully reduced rice prices by up to P3 per kilo and reduced rice inflation from 15 percent to 0.8 percent. This also resulted in the lowest nationwide inflation rate in 20 years.