Kudos and thank you very much to Stephen Sackur and the team behind BBC HARDtalk for doing an in-depth research prior to interviewing Mr. Trillanes.
On behalf of the millions of Filipinos who are behind the duly elected President, we thank you deeply for doing that hard-hitting interview fairly and more importantly, for arming yourself with enough facts (so the other party cannot just continue to spew lies and feed your viewers with all the wrong information).
Allow me please to correct and add a few information which may be helpful in your future episodes/interviews:
1. The present admin., contrary to what this overly ambitious Mr. Trillanes wants the international community to believe, has no propaganda machine. It is the other way around: The Duterte detractors--composed mostly of narco-politicians, losing political party, and greedy oligarchs directly and indirectly connected to some local & foreign news agencies and whose lives and wealth are obviously threatened by the new admin--are the ones relentlessly spending multi-millions and are desperately moving heaven and earth to overthrow the President.
2. Meanwhile, it is us, the millions of ordinary Filipinos worldwide and active Filipino netizens, who stepped up voluntarily and are using the social media to help correct the false narratives and distorted information that the likes of Mr. Trillanes have been feeding the international community.
3. The "7,000/9,000" is the total number of murder/homicide cases--much of the said figure are not related to the on-going drug war.
3. In the previous admin prior to Duterte, the annual homicide & murder cases were 11,500-16,200 (2011-2015).
4. There are now 1.3 million drug personalities who surrenderered--alive and unharmed.
5. There are about 83,000 drug personalities arrested--alive and unharmed.
6. Contrary to Mr. Trillanes' claim, the 1.3 million drug personalities who surrendered and the 83K arrested are not all poor. Several high-value targets were arrested or killed during legitimate police operations--including wealthy and powerful politicians as well as police scalawags who were connected to drug syndicates.
7. Our govt. has put in place mega drug rehab centers and has also launched several rehabilitation and reintegration programs.
8. Total crime rate in the Philippines has dropped by about 30% compared to previous year.
It's a fact that President Duterte won due to the support of the social media in the Philippines, where access by ordinary Filipinos are either from Twitter or Facebook. Majority are in facebook as any Filipino in the Philippines who have a mobile phone can access it for free via free data. Miss MJ as she is known to us is one of the most prominent social media warrior that Filipinos locally and internationally follow. She is also a co-founder of thelittleswallow, a non-profit and a no-government organisation for the upliftment of the poor, vulnerable and disadvantaged sectors of our society.
This open letter is in response to BBC's interview to Senator Trillanes, the opposition's frontman of Liberal Party, who from the start of the Duterte administration have been wanting to impeach or oust him in his presidency, including a filing of complaint in the International Criminal Courts of Justice in Hague. Please have an open mind in that the stories about President Duterte that have been coming out of the Phillippines are far from the realities that have been happening for months now.