I HAD the privilege of an audience with the president-elect in Davao City for a courtesy call scheduled at 2:30 a.m. Yes indeed, President Rodrigo Roa Duterte (PRRD) holds strange hours. I was accompanying a mutual friend, an American philanthropist whom he had invited long before his election. After the customary amenities, the conversation turned to a topic that intermittently crops up like a broken record and soured his attitude toward the United States government. I wrote on Dec. 29, 2016 in my Manila Times column:

“A point at issue then was the ‘Meiring matter’ that irritated the President, generating some sort of the lingering mistrust for the American government, reflected in his lukewarm attitude toward the outgoing US Ambassador Goldberg.