Senator Kiko Pangilinan: “No comment na lang.”
KIKO PANGILINAN — Here’s what the incumbent senator said about President Rodrigo Duterte’s tirades against him.
On Wednesday, Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan brushed aside President Rodrigo Duterte’s latest tirades against him, saying that the Philippines needed solutions to the problems brought about by typhoon “Odette” and COVID-19, not politics.
“No comment na lang,” Pangilinan said in a text message to GMA News Online. “Tulong at solusyon sa mga problema ang kailangan ng ating mga kababayan hindi pamumulitika.”
Pangilinan’s statement came after President Duterte, in his “Talk to the People” public address aired Tuesday night, slammed the senator anew for authoring the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006.
READ ALSO: President Duterte Urges Voters Not To Vote For Gordon, Pangilinan
According to the President, children who committed a crime can be set free because of the said law, adding that it raised the number of crimes “tenfold”.
President Duterte then urged voters not to vote for Pangilinan, who is running for vice president in the 2022 elections, as well as reelectionist Senator Richard Gordon, who led the Senate inquiry into the alleged anomalous government purchases of pandemic supplies in 2020.
Earlier, Pangilinan defended the crafting of Republic Act 9344. He said in an interview on the Mangahas Interviews that the government did not fund the law, resulting in its poor implementation.
It wasn’t the first time that the President criticized the opposition senator for authoring the law.
In 2018, the President called Pangilinan the “most stupid” lawyer for pushing for the enactment of the Republic Act 9344. Sought for his reaction at the time, the senator suggested that President Duterte needed to focus on the country’s problems.
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