Vice President Sara Duterte defended herself for wearing a tribal dress during President Marcos' recent State of the Nation Address, and said that she wanted to "raise awareness (on) the victimization" of the Indigenous People's by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, New People's Army (NPA).
Duterte said she wore the traditional dress not only to honor one of the tribes, the Bagobo Tagabawa, of her hometown Davao City, but also to express solidarity "with the lumads of Mindanao and the many other IPs groups all over the country who have been uprising against the terrorist NPA's chronic exploitation of their children, arming them as new recruits."
Duterte made the statement after former Bayan Muna partylist Rep. Eufemia Cullamat called her wearing of a tribal dress as "useless", and only a "show-off" considering that she red-tagged the students and teachers of Lumad schools.
According to Duterte, it was Cullamat who "should apologize to her fellow IPs for allowing a terrorist group like the NPA to strip them of their dignity as a people and dragging them into a war that serves them nothing as IPs."
The Vice President even noted that Cullamat's own daughter was "an NPA fighter who died in Mindanao in 2020."
"And as a mother of a dead NPA fighter, she should apologize to her daughter for sending her to her untimely gruesome demise," she added.
Duterte said she will "not waver" and will continue to wear traditional dresses from IPs and other groups "to honor and stand in solidarity...against terrorist organizations like the NPA and people like Cullamat."
"In fact, you will see me even more relentless because I have a responsibility to the Filipino people, especially to the Filipino children," she said.
"And I promise not to stop so that parents like Cullamat do not bury the bullet-ridden bodies of their children—killed in a war perpetuated by a senseless and idiotic ideology," she added.