(Eagle News) — President Rodrigo Duterte urged Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque to not run for a Senate seat in 2019, and offered him another job instead.
In a speech before Philippine Military Academy alumni on Thursday, Oct. 4, Duterte said Roque will, after all, not win because the military does not like him.
In a press conference on Friday, Oct. 5, Roque confirmed Duterte indeed offered him a job in government, but he did not say what this was.
The position, after all, Roque said, was “non-existent.”
“It’s a suggestion made by the senators and it came from the Senate President, and I understand that they in fact had discussed about this matter. That much I know,” he said.
Earlier, Senate President Tito Sotto suggested that the Office of the Press Secretary be revived.
But according to Roque, he needed the weekend to think things through.
He said he would also contemplate about whether he was effective as the President’s spokesperson, after he told the media Duterte merely took a day off in Bahay Pangarap on Wednesday, and did not go to the hospital.
It turned out Duterte actually did go to the hospital to undergo some tests on that day.
According to Roque, he did not know about that part of the President’s schedule.
“I have said that I needed the weekend to think about my options, but as you can see I cannot be effective as a spokesperson unless I know everything about the President,” he said.