The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today lauded Davao City Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte “for standing up against US high-handed intervention and exposing and condemning US covert operations in the Philippines.”

Vice Mayor Duterte reacted the other day to leaked secret cables from the US Embassy in Manila which virtually accused him of masterminding the spate of gangland-style killings of suspected criminals in Davao City. The series of cables published by the Wikileaks.org website also reveal that then Mayor Duterte had “not been eager to establish dialogue” with US embassy officials.

Reacting to such reports, Duterte said: “I’m not the mayor of Washington DC, why should I explain myself to them.” Duterte then proceeded to expose the case of Michael Meiring, an American citizen arrested by Davao City police after injuring himself when a bomb he was preparing exploded in his hotel room in 2002.

Meiring was whisked by US and Philippine intelligence operatives from the hospital and subequently flown out of the country. It is widely believed that Meiring was an American CIA operative engaged in covert operations in the Philippines such as bombings in Davao and other parts of Mindanao to justify US intervention in so-called counter-terrorism efforts.

The CPP said the “independent attitude” shown by Vice Mayor Duterte in relation to US interference in the Philippines is “remarkably different from the obsequiousness of most Filipino politicians who control the Philippine neocolonial state.”

“Save for Vice Mayor Duterte, not a single reactionary politician has protested the out and out imperial domination and interference of the US government in the internal political, military and economic affairs of the Philippines as revealed in these cables,” added the CPP.

September 17, 2011

Communist Party of the Philippines