How does Putin stay single and happy? Duterte wants to know

President Rodrigo Duterte and Russian President Vladimir Putin AP photos

When he sees Russian President Vladimir Putin next month, President Duterte will raise a question that has nothing to do with global politics.

“How do you stay single and be happy all the time, Mr. Putin? I’d like to ask him that question. Give me the secret,” the President said in a speech at the inauguration of the marker of the Metro Manila Development Authority’s Metro Manila Crisis Monitoring and Management Center at Guadalupe Nuevo in Makati.

Putin, who is divorced from Lyudmila, his wife of 30 years, is rumored to have a girlfriend.

Mr. Duterte, who likes to joke about having more than one woman in his life, had his marriage to wife Elizabeth Zimmerman—the mother of his three children—annulled in 2000. His current partner is Honeylet Avanceña, with whom he has a daughter.

In his speech, Mr. Duterte also came to the defense of House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez against criticism over the controversy stemming from his admission that he has a girlfriend.

He said Alvarez, who is estranged from his wife, was not a Catholic.

“Do you know, Speaker Alvarez is not a Catholic. He is just like me, his grandfather, Chinese, his mother is a Calagan Muslim—the Muslims of Davao,” he said.

“Bebot is smart. Even if he has five, four [women], there’s nothing we can do, he never converted to Christianity. So he is not bound by the rules of the number of women you can have,” he said.

He noted that Alvarez is being threatened with disbarment for admitting to having a girlfriend.

“This is a world of hypocrisy. Who here has no women?” he said.

He also said those being accused of womanizing can just claim to be atheists.

“The Judeo-Christian has one wife, but if you are an atheist, you can have as much as you want as long as you are able to support the children,” he said.

He also wondered about the fuss over having several wives.

“Why do you have to bother about how many wives? It’s a chauvinist statement but really, there are so many women and so short a time in this world,” he said.

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