President Rodrigo Duterte referred to two of his closest officials as “senators” during his visit to Zamboanga Sibugay on Thursday.
“By the way, we have two senators [present] here. Senator Tolentino and Senator Bong Go if you would help him,” the President told the crowd in the Visayan dialect.
“The others [in the Senate] should be replaced. They are noisy and arrogant,” said Duterte in his speech.
Both Christopher “Bong” Go and Francis Tolentino, the President’s special assistant and political adviser, respectively, are being pushed by the President to join the Senate.
It was reported before that the supporters of Go launched a campaign in early March, dubbed as “Ready, Set, Go!” encouraging the President’s aide to run in the 2019 midterm polls.
Duterte believed Go’s extensive experience in public service assisting the President since 1998 would earn him a seat in the Senate.
Tolentino, meanwhile, ran as an independent candidate for senator in the 2016 national elections but lost to detained Senator Leila de Lima by 1.3 million votes.
He was later given a job in the Duterte administration after the former MMDA chief reportedly donated around P3 million for the President’s political campaign.