PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte confirmed that he is not attending the ASEAN-US Summit in May.
He said he won’t attend the summit, where he was invited by US President Joe Biden, which will be held in Washington on May 11-13, 2022.
In his Talk to the People, President Duterte said he will not attend because the summit will be held after the elections, where the people would have known already who will be the country’s next president.
He said it won’t look good if he will attend the summit since a new president was already elected, even though not proclaimed yet by Congress.
Second, he said, the event is a working conference, which means there may be agreements or commitments that may be arrived at, and it would be difficult that he will have a position on these agreements, which will not be acceptable to the incoming administration.
According to the president, the US really wanted for him to attend and engage in a dialogue with US President Biden, but circumstances would not allow it.
It can be recalled that the special summit was supposed to happen in March but got pushed to May.