MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte advised Cabinet officials on Monday to walk out of a Senate hearing if Sen. Richard Gordon would start shouting at them to “keep their dignity.”
“Don’t allow Gordon to just shout at you. Just stand up and go out,” Duterte said, speaking partly in Filipino, in his taped address that aired late Monday night.
The Senate blue ribbon committee, which Gordon chairs, has not completed its probe into the procurement last year of allegedly overpriced medical supplies from Pharmally Pharmaceuticals Inc.
“I said if the sergeant-at-arms detains you, then once I hear about it, I will go to the Senate and get you, extract you. That’s what will really happen,” the president said.
Duterte warned the Senate, particularly Gordon, that there would be “trouble in government” if his officials would be detained for walking out of a hearing.
“Then Mr. Gordon, we will be having a crisis. Then Mr. Gordon, at the end of the day, it is the country that will suffer,” he added.
The president had previously advised Cabinet officials to get clearance from him first before attending a Senate hearing.
READ: Duterte can legally bar Cabinet members from attending Senate probe – Palace
Malacañang said Duterte would only give his clearance if the Senate hearing would prove to be “in aid of legislation” and not “in aid of election.”
Duterte took aim at Gordon again on Monday, devoting much of his address lambasting the Senate blue ribbon committee chairman.
READ: Duterte calls Gordon ‘despot,’ ‘pathological story-teller’: ‘Para kang lasing’
“You simply melt into a kind of a despot when you don’t let the person you’re insulting finish [his statement],” he said.
“One of these days there will be somebody who will stand up against you and say: ‘Putangina kayong lahat [You’re all sons of bitches]’,” the president said.