President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. reiterated his openness to mending ties with Vice President Sara Duterte and her family, but emphasized that true reconciliation cannot be built on conditions or demands.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the recently concluded ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Marcos pushed back against suggestions that reconciliation efforts between him and the Dutertes should come with specific terms.
“That’s not how reconciliation works. You don’t put conditions to reconcile,” Marcos told members of the Philippine media delegation on Tuesday. “If you’re sincere and want to reconcile, let’s sit down and talk. Let’s figure out what the problem really is, how it happened, and get rid of it,” he added.
Marcos explained that reconciliation cannot succeed if one side insists on terms before even sitting down to talk.
“If you say, ‘I won’t talk to you unless you give me this, this, and this’—then it won’t solve anything. That’s not reconciliation. That’s not even negotiation. That’s demanding,” he said. “If it becomes a tit-for-tat—‘I’ll do this if you do that’—then the conversation’s already over.”
Asked how far he is willing to go to pursue reconciliation, the President replied that he is keeping an open mind.
“You can’t prejudge everything. If you truly want reconciliation, then you should be willing to listen to everything they say,” he said. “If I can fix what they ask for, I will—just to end this. As I said, I don’t want enemies.”
