RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, gave an interview on Thursday, July 9th, in which he stated that his country would be in deep trouble had it followed the United States and Brazil in managing the novel coronavirus pandemic.
For the controversial Philippine leader, his country is “poor” and could not afford a reopening in the midst of rising new cases of the disease, as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro are doing.
“In the US and Brazil, presidents are bold. Bolsonaro has money, he’s like Trump, with his ‘to hell with it’ approach. We are poor. We cannot allow complete chaos. If we followed the examples of other countries, reopened the whole economy and thousands and thousands of new cases would arise, we would be in deep shit,” said Duterte according to Vice website.
According to the president, the main issue is that the Philippines “do not have enough money to deal with the pandemic” and that it must be very precise when reopening the whole economy.
“Now, what really happened in those countries [Brazil and the United States] is that they opened their economies so that money would reach the government coffers and they had a peak [of cases]. They are facing issues with recurrences,” he said, according to the website.
Duterte is often compared to Trump and Bolsonaro because he is a far-right politician with very controversial positions in several areas. During the pandemic, he enforced a strict quarantine with the arrest of anyone found violating social isolation.
Through Friday morning, July 10th, the Philippines reported 52,914 cases of Covid-19 and 1,360 deaths, according to data from the Johns Hopkins University Center.
Source: ANSA