By Marlon Ramos
The country’s top diplomat wants to hear it straight from him.
Foreign Secretary Ma. Theresa Lazaro on Tuesday said she would reach out to Philippine Ambassador to the United Kingdom Teodoro Locsin Jr. to verify whether he was indeed behind a Facebook post accusing the Marcos administration of “abducting” former President Rodrigo Duterte.
“I have to talk to him a little bit later tonight. Mag-uusap muna kami,” Lazaro told reporters when asked to comment on Locsin’s supposed social media post.
Asked if it was really the ambassador who made the remarks critical of the government, she replied: “I cannot confirm that. (But) there must be a reason for that.”
Lazaro, who defended the Department of Foreign Affairs’ proposed 2026 spending plan during the Senate budget deliberations, previously served under Locsin when he was foreign secretary during the Duterte administration.
A Facebook account under the name “Teodoro Locsin” had posted that Duterte was “not arrested” by the International Criminal Court (ICC), but was instead “abducted by Filipinos in the Philippines and handed over to foreigners.”
“If he is guilty of crimes, we thereby confessed our country’s and our state’s inability to hold him to account. We thereby foreswore the first attribute of sovereign independence- an effective justice system,” the post read.
“No wonder there are ‘Trillion People Marches’ for just that reason- the inability of domestic justice to hold grand theft auto-appropriation to account. But Trillion People Marches only admit that while we can get angry, we cannot meaningfully govern ourselves,” it added.
The post was referring to the Sept. 21 anti-corruption protests spearheaded by political activists and civil society leaders, most of whom were critics of Duterte’s ruthless war on drugs.
The post further claimed that Duterte’s continued detention at the ICC showed that Filipinos “need the help of foreigners- and such foreigners at that: washed-up powers.”
“The idea that foreigners especially Westerners can judge us is beyond disgusting; it is treason. The deepest imaginable. It is a confession begging for foreign domination in purely national affairs; and by willing and complicit admission,” it said.
Locsin has yet to confirm if he was really the one who posted the rather undiplomatic remarks.