President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday left it to his close friend, preacher Apollo Quiboloy, to redeem his soul from hell, saying he was willing to mortgage his soul to the devil in his fight against corruption and illegal drugs.
Duterte said he could go “evil to evil” to extinguish corruption and illegal drugs—two issues he promised to solve in his presidency during his campaign for the presidency.
“Do not ever, ever think that you are the only one who can do evil things kasi ako marunong rin akong bumaba sa impiyerno to really meet you where you want it to be,” he said in an interview with Quiboloy.
“Hindi na ako mag-elaborate niyan pero kung anong kaya mong gawin, kaya ko rin talaga; at gagawin ko. Kaya ganoon nga ang nangyayari, hindi kita papayagan makalusot. But, Pastor, for the life of me, I never, never allow the killing of the young people,” he added.
Data from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency’s monitoring platform #RealNumbersPH found 6,011 persons killed in anti-drug operations from July 2016 to December 2020.
“You drug people…you are doing an evil thing and you think that you can conquer good. So ‘pag ‘yan ang nasa paradigm ng isip ninyo, mindset ninyo, sabihin ko ito sa inyo: you are doing evil, sometimes I also do evil. So evil to evil tayo,” Duterte said.
The president hoped the “Kingdom of Jesus Christ” founder and self-proclaimed “Appointed Son of God” could salvage his soul from the evil he was able to do while stooping to the level of criminals.
“Maybe if I said if I have to mortgage my soul to the devil to fight them I will do it. But I hope, pastor, that you will redeem the mortgage. Bayaran mo na lang para ganoon na lang e ipagbili mo, isangla mo ‘yong kaluluwa. And then that’s the reason why I am very honest with you na sana naman tubusin mo na lang ako doon sa impiyerno,” he said.
Quiboloy himself had faced complaints of rape, child abuse and human trafficking, among others, from members of his church not only in the Philippines but abroad as well. John Ezekiel J. Hirro