President Duterte has been filmed live on a Facebook giving assurances that he is not in a coma, but alive and “fairly healthy”.
In a video posed by Special Assistant to the President Christopher”Bong” Go today (Monday, August 20), he told communist leader Jose Maria Sison that he was not in a coma.
The 73-year-old made issued the rebuttal after Sison spread a rumour yesterday that the president has been comatose “since the afternoon or evening of Sunday, August 19”.
The president even bragged that he was having dinner with a “beautiful lady” called Vernice.
“I said, I’m alive, fairly healthy and having dinner with the beautiful lady from Davao. She’s Vernice,” he said. “Only from Harvard. She’ll return there. I invited her to discuss many things along the way when she comes back.
“I’m still okay. They said I’m comatose? How can I be comatose with a beautiful lady? If I’m comatose and I see Vernice, I will really rise. That’s it.”
In his Facebook post yesterday, Sison alleged that Duterte appeared to be ill when he attended the national conference of the San Beda Law fraternity Lex Talionis in Davao City on Saturday night.
Quoting guests at the event, Sison said the “darkness” of th president’s face “had become aggravated from its appearance the other day” and that his walk and handshake “had become more unstable”.
As we have previously reported, his aides were quick to deny the claims, assuring journalists this morning that he remained in good health.
In offering video proof of his wellbeing, the president turned the tables on Sison, saying that it was he who was “in and out of the hospital” in the Netherlands, where he lives in exile.
“You are the one who is in comatose,” he told Sison, who was his professor at the Lyceum University.
“You know, the truth is the Netherlands is complaining because you are in and out of the hospital and you are not paying the hospital bills. You are not paying and you are abusing the hospitality of the Netherlands.”
The president then said said he was willing to accommodate Sison, if the communist leader wanted to return to the Philippines.
However, he said the offered lodgings would be inside the New Bilibid Prison, where he would have “enough space and plenty of company”.
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https://www.facebook.com/bongGOma/videos/926037554252092/