Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte does not have cancer, the acting interior minister said on Tuesday, after the firebrand leader underwent tests in a private hospital.<\/p>\n
The public has been clamouring for information about Duterte\u2019s health after the 73-year-old missed two official events last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe disclosed to us that the result of the test was negative, the one where they took samples from his intestines,\u201d Eduardo Ano told reporters in an event posted on Facebook live by domestic news agencies.<\/p>\n
Ano said Duterte made the disclosure during a cabinet meeting on Monday night. The president made an unscheduled visit to a hospital when doctors asked him to repeat digestive tract procedures three weeks after similar tests.<\/p>\n
Duterte\u2019s condition \u201cis not serious\u201d and will remain a confidential matter, his spokesman, Harry Roque, told a separate news briefing, declining either to confirm or deny the prior remarks of the acting interior minister.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president will abide by the constitution, but because it is not serious, he will treat his medical condition as confidential,\u201d he said. Roque declined to give details of the test results and Duterte\u2019s health.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet us wait for his disclosure. Anything that is confidential can be waived by the person alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Philippine constitution provides for the public to be told of the state of health of an incumbent president, if serious. If the leader dies in office, permanently disabled or removed through impeachment, the vice president succeeds to serve out the rest of a six-year, single term.<\/p>\n
Vice President Leni Robredo, an opposition leader, was elected separately in 2016 and could fuel uncertainty in the succession process in a highly polarised political climate.<\/p>\n
Duterte\u2019s health was a constant source of speculation after he disappeared from public view for a week last year but his aides dismissed rumours of his medical condition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte does not have cancer, the acting interior minister said on Tuesday, after the firebrand leader underwent tests in a private hospital. The public has been clamouring for information about Duterte\u2019s health after the 73-year-old missed two official events last week. \u201cHe disclosed to us that the result of the test was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44122,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44123,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44121\/revisions\/44123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}