President-elect in hot water for 'improper' whistle
President-elect Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday was accused of sexual harassment and disrespecting women after wolf whistling a female journalist during a nationally televised news conference.
Duterte, 71, interrupted a question from television reporter Mariz Umali on Tuesday night about his Cabinet appointees with a lighthearted comment about her trying to get his attention, then wolf whistling and breaking into a short serenade. Umali continued trying to ask her question as Duterte smiled and some other reporters laughed.
In an interview with her GMA network on Thursday, Umali described his remarks as "improper".
While Umali said she would not ask for an apology and sought not to inflame the controversy, her journalist husband took to Facebook to criticize Duterte.
"Catcalling my wife is wrong on so many levels," Raffy Tima wrote. "Some jokes are funny and should be laughed at but disrespecting women is definitely not one of them."
At the same news conference, Duterte created another controversy by saying there was justification for killing corrupt journalists, and that one reporter deserved to have been murdered.
Duterte, an incendiary politician who won last month's elections by a landslide on a pledge to end crime by killing tens of thousands of criminals, has previously been criticized for comments about women.
On the campaign trail he made a joke about wanting to rape a "beautiful" Australian missionary who had been sexually assaulted and murdered in a 1989 prison riot in his hometown of Davao.
When his daughter reacted to those comments by revealing she had been raped, Duterte described her in jest as a "drama queen".
(China Daily 06/03/2016 page12)
