NUJP calls out Duterte’s legal counsel for ‘lechery and misogyny’

MANILA, Philippines – The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) hit Chief Presidential Counsel Salvador Panelo for making a sexual joke in a recent interview with two women journalists. 

During the interview with Swiss National Public Radio and Television’s Karin Wenger and freelance Filipino journalist Ana Santos, the government official said he was “better in bed” and  that “I fuck like an 18-year old.”

He then asked the journalists if they didn’t get the joke – that when he said “I fuck my clothes because I travel a lot,” he meant “”I pack my clothes,” referring to a common mistake of mispronouncing “p” in “pack” as “f” in “fuck.” 

When Wenger and Santos made public the details of the encounter, Panelo accused them of taking the joke “wrongly to suit your anti-administration sentiment” and “to put me in a bad light, as well as the President.”

“So, yes, Mr. Panelo, you are right in saying Ms. Wenger and Ms. Santos didn’t get the joke. Neither do we,” NUJP said in a statement on Friday, October 27. 

“And we stand with our two colleagues in denouncing your crass display of lechery and misogyny.”

The journalists’ union said not much truth and decency could be expected in the first place from Panelo. They recalled that he defended in court the primary suspects in the 2009 Ampatuan Massacre, where 58 persons, including 32 media practitioners, were killed in an election-related violence. – Rappler.com