Duterte vs ‘hallucinating’ Sison? The ‘choice is obvious,’ Palace says

Presidential spokesperson and Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo. INQUIRER PHOTO/JOAN BONDOC

MANILA, Philippines – Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founding chair Jose Maria Sison is “out of touch of reality and in a constant state of hallucination,” Malacañang said Wednesday after the exiled communist leader slammed President Duterte as a “modern maniac in power.”

“Jose Maria Sison’s long exile has dulled his senses, put him out of touch of reality and in a constant state of hallucination,” Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said in the statement.

He mocked Sison’s failed rebellion and his comrades’ armed struggle, who celebrate their 50th anniversary on Wednesday.

In an interview over ABS-CBN News Channel, Sison, a professor of Duterte in college, called the President a “mediocre student” and a “modern maniac in power trying to put on a national scale his bloodthirsty kind of character,” whom he said was “much worse than the Marcos phenomenon.”

But who’s the better choice between Duterte and Sison? Panelo said the answer “is obvious.”

“An intellectual whose fifty years of rebellion is a failure that brought only the loss of lives and destruction of property and fear to the the very people he is supposed to have fought for as against a self proclaimed mediocre city mayor who rose to the presidency of the land by an overwhelming majority, and who has launched a revolution of change in almost all aspects of governance, who is performing his constitutional duty to serve and to protect the people and preserve the democratic way of life from the criminals, the corrupt, the terrorists and from the likes of failed ideologies like Jose Maria Sison, the choice is obvious,” he said.

“The winds of change will sweep this incorrigible rebel, who is living in comfort and luxury while his comrades are in the hills, as well as those who follow him, to oblivion and will be buried in the dustbin of history,” he added.

He then reiterated his call for communist rebels to surrender to the government.

“It is not too late though for them to return to the fold of society and embrace the rule of law and the majority. In the spirit of Christmas we still wish him well and pray that he be blessed with inner peace and enlightenment,” he said.