DAVAO CITY – Former President Rodrigo Duterte’s long-time partner, Honeylet Avanceña, claimed she was suspended from visiting him at the International Criminal Court detention center in The Hague, Netherlands.
FORMER President Duterte with long-time partner Honeylet and daughter Kitty. (FB)
In an interview with Boldyak TV on Aug. 1, Avanceña said the former President’s legal team suspended her visitation rights after being accused of discussing case-related matters during a phone call which she denied.
“During my visit, just five minutes before it ended, one of the staff told me that I supposedly mentioned the case in a phone call on July 19. I told them I don’t know anything about the case,” Avanceña said in the local dialect.
She addressed former President Duterte’s legal counsel, Nicholas Kaufman, asserting that she never sought any case-related documents from him and, therefore, could not have spoken about it.
Avanceña said she was surprised about the suspension. She added that the former President even told the man who informed her about the suspension that they cannot do that, and that he was expecting Avanceña to visit him.
In response to her claims, Kaufman denied any internal conflict within the legal team and defended the integrity of his work for former President Duterte. He assured that there are no internal disagreements among those handling the defense.
“The Vice President, being a lawyer herself, is fully capable of assessing the quality of my legal service,” Kaufman added.
Former presidential spokesperson Harry Roque was also dragged into the controversy, with his name linked to the issue surrounding Avanceña’s suspended visitation.
Kaufman, however, dismissed Roque as an “irrelevancy” and criticized the time spent addressing what he described as his “comical intrigues.”
Roque responded and questioned Kaufman’s remarks and accused him of deflecting from the central issue.
“Why am I, once again, the subject of Mr. Nicholas Kaufman’s latest outburst? Is this his version of a blame game?” Roque said in an interview where he said that the focus should remain on Avanceña’s suspension and the treatment she received.
There has been no official statement from the ICC or former President Duterte’s legal team regarding the specific grounds or duration of Avanceña’s suspension.