Duterte bares talk with China’s President Xi Jinping on COVID-19 vaccine

(Eagle News) — President Rodrigo Duterte started his fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday, July 27, saying that there is now hope for a COVID-19 vaccine as the virus pandemic wreaked havoc around the world.
“We live in a troubled time,” he said as he opened his SONA, and talked about how the COVID-19 pandemic had spared no one “neither rich nor poor.”
But he said, “let us not despair. The vaccine is around the corner.”
“Sooner and not later, the virus that gobbled thousands of lives will certainly be laid to rest,” he said.
He noted how the effects of the virus on the global scale was unpreceedented.
But he said that he had already talked with Chinese President Xi Jinping that in case China had already perfected the vaccine against COVID-19, that the Philippines would be given priority.
Duterte also expressed “gratitude” to those who offered their lives to fight the pandemic, and also those who made possible the “steady supply of food, water” and other basic supplies.
“You showed kindness and selflessnesss, and risked your own lives to serve the greater good,” the President said.
-Duterte hits Drilon for defending Lopezes-
The President, however, briefly hit the oligarch families, naming the Lopezes at the start of his speech.
He also criticized Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon during his speech for defending the Lopezes.
Duterte said that Drilon was interviewed after the House Committee on Legislative Franchises denied the franchise renewal application of ABS-CBN.
“There are those who take advantage of a preoccupied government” during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.
“One of them is Senator Franklin Drilon,” he said.
“Obviously he was defending the Lopezes, that they are not oligarchs,” Duterte said.
The President said that he was one of the victims of the Lopezes during the 2016 presidential elections.
“Media is a powerful tool in the hands of oligarchs like the Lopezes,” he said.
(Eagle News Service)