FILE PHOTO: Senator Richard Gordon and President Rodrigo Duterte. INQUIRER FILES
MANILA, Philippines — Senator Richard Gordon on Wednesday hit President Rodrigo Duterte for cursing God and then turning to Him later during this pandemic.
“The President should have tried to go on the higher ground,” Gordon said in an interview over ABS-CBN News Channel.
“But when you have a president, and I’m sorry, Digong, when you’re showing your dirty finger, when you’re using the P.I. word all the time, when you’re cursing God, when you’re cursing the Church, and then suddenly you turn around and sinasabi mo na tulungan tayo ng Panginoon (and say God help us), that’s very hypocritical,” he said.
In his final State of the Nation Address last Monday, Duterte told Filipinos to just pray to God as “there’s no way of telling when this virus would disappear or vanish from the earth.”
“We can only pray to God to look into our direction and decide on what will happen to this planet he created,” the President said.
Gordon also said Duterte’s previous jokes about his private part leave a “bad taste.”
What is really “more wrong,” he said, is when people laugh and only very few condemn his dirty jokes.
READ: From pope to penis, Duterte shocks with trash talk
“My point is, our president must be respected not only by the country. He must be respected by the whole world, not just China, the whole world,” the senator stressed.
In 2019, Duterte lashed at Gordon, calling him a “smart-ass” who moves around “like a penguin,” after the latter criticized the President’s appointment of retired military men to government positions.
READ: Gordon on Duterte insults: He’s just concerned about my waistline
“You are a fart away from disaster … Do not be too presumptuous about your talent. Why do you criticize me? It’s my prerogative,” Duterte said then.