(Eagle News) – President Rodrigo Duterte has decided to cancel the purchase of the 26,000 rifles from the United States that a US Senator had earlier threatened to halt.
For the President, the reason was simple. The rifles would just be used to kill fellow Filipinos so there is no rush to buy them. He said he is bent on pursuing peace and that he would be content if this would be achieved in his term. This he stressed in his speech at the signing ceremonies of the Executive Order that reconstituted the Bangsamoro Transition Commission on Monday, November 7.
“We will not insist on buying expensive arms from the United States. We can always get them somewhere else. So kalimutan na nila. I am ordering the police to cancel it. We don’t need them,” he said.
“You know why? Bakit? Why should we hurry it? Yung baril na yan bilhin ko? Sinong papatayin ko nyan? Wala naman tayong kalaban. Tayo-tayo lang ang nagpapatayan dito? (Who would I kill with these guns I would buy? We have no enemies. We’re the only ones killing each other.) So what’s my hurry? I don’t have to hurry. I buy bullets, what for? For the Filipinos?” the President explained.
“I will just cancel it. Contribute it to the success of the reinvigorated Bangsamoro Transition Committee. The government could look for other uses for the money,” he said. “Let us just have a moratorium of violence and, maybe, we can use the money, use for some other endeavors,” he said.
The President said he is “committed to the peace process” and that he prayed that this would succeed in his term.
“Sabi ko nga, maski yan na lang ang magawa ko sa bayan, okay na ako. Then I can retire in peace” he added.
The President said that if the country really needs to buy weapons, then the government would look to other countries to source them.
“We will just have to look for another source that is cheaper and maybe as durable and as good as those made in the place we are ordering them,” he said.
The Philippine National Police had earlier said that the deal was still on as the US Senator, Ben Cardin, the top Democrat in the US Senate foreign relations committee, had not really made any moves to stop it. A Reuters report earlier said he would oppose the gun deal to the Philippines, quoting Cardin’s aides, that the US Senator “was reluctant for the United States to provide the weapons given concerns about human rights violations in the Philippines.”
PNP spokesman Senior Supt. Dionardo Carlos said that the executive vice president of Global Defense Sales which is a division of firearms maker Sig Sauer in the US, did not say anything about the deal being cancelled. The letter dated Nov. 1, 2016 from Global Defense Sales vice-president Amaro Goncalvez, was sent to Intrade Asia-Pacific, which was the representative of Sig Sauer in the Philippines.
Carlos earlier said there was no formal notice from the US that the deal had been cancelled.
But the President said that if indeed there was no formal cancellation on the sale, then he was ordering the PNP to forget about it and cancel the deal altogether.
“I would like to announce now that the 26,000 [rifles] that was, maybe, ordered or were ordered already, I am ordering its cancelation by the police,” Duterte said in his speech in Malacañang.
The firearms were reportedly supposed to arrive in July 2017. (Eagle News Service)
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