MANILA, Philippines – Malacañang supports Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s push for the Philippine Senate to withdraw from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), an international group of lawmakers that has criticized the Duterte administration for its attacks on opposition senators Leila de Lima and Antonio Trillanes IV.

“I support the call of Speaker Arroyo,” said Presidential Spokesman and Chief Presidential Counsel Salvador Panelo said in a Palace news briefing on Tuesday, October 23, adding that this was the official Malacañang stance.

“Ever since that has been the stance of the President. We’ve been hearing him make speeches in the same tone,” Panelo added.

The day before, the Palace blasted the IPU for “prying” and interfering in domestic affairs. This came after the IPU, in a resolution, said it may conduct a fact-finding mission to check on any violations of the rights of Trillanes, a fierce critic of the President’s.

“They’ve been giving pre-judgements and to our minds that is an intrusion, offensive to the decency of this country as well as an intrusion to our sovereignty,” Panelo said on Tuesday.

Members of the Senate,  the chamber that belongs to the IPU, are divided  over Arroyo’s recommendation and said 

Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon called the suggestion “defeatist” and a “tacit admission that indeed critical lawmakers are being persecuted under the Duterte administration.”

But Senate President Vicente Sotto III, an administration ally, said he was “inclined to concur” with Arroyo and reminded the IPU that the Philippines is a “sovereign state with a working judicial process.”

De Lima, a senator who investigated Duterte’s links to death squads when he was Davao City mayor and recent extrajudicial killings, had been detained for more than a year over drug charges some have branded as trumped up and politically-motivated.

Trillanes, who accused Duterte of hiding ill-gotten wealth, is the administration’s new target, with a presidential order seeking his arrest. – Rappler.com