Senators do not agree that Health Secretary Francisco Duque III should be considered the "hero" in the Philippines' COVID-19 response.
On Monday, President Duterte hailed Duque as the "hero" in the country's fight against the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), saying the government was "doing good" in its COVID-19 response.
"That's his (Duterte's) opinion, to me, the frontliners are the heroes!" Senate President Vicente Sotto III said in a text message to reporters on Tuesday, May 4.
Senator Grace Poe also echoed the same view, reminding the President that "the real COVID-19 pandemic heroes are courageous workers risking their own lives for others."
"With their hard work and resilience, we see people volunteering to make up for the inadequacies to the virus response," Poe pointed out.
"Even as we all have been humbled by this health crisis, let us not deny our frontliners the recognition that rightfully belongs to them," she added, calling for "efficient governance and social services".
Senator Panfilo Lacson, who blamed Duque for "dropping the ball" on the Philippines' early procurement of COVID-19 vaccines last year, also rejected Duterte's statement.
"He said that the Philippines is doing good in the fight against Covid 19 and called his health secretary a “hero”. What he really meant was 'hilo (crazy)'," Lacson tweeted.
Senator Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan expressed his disbelief about the health secretary's supposed excellence in managing the pandemic. "Palagay ko sila sila nalang ang naniniwala do'n (I think they are the only ones believing that)," he said in separate text message.
For Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, Duque should not be only one getting the credit, saying "several" officials have also done their part in addressing the health crisis.
"Just to be fair, there were several heroes who effectively contributed to the government's response to COVID -- these are Sec. Galvez, Sec. Dizon and all the medical frontliners," he said.
"This is a team effort. No one man can arrest a pandemic of this magnitude," Gatchalian said.
Several senators have long been calling on Duque to resign for his supposed blunders in handling the COVID-19 outbreak.
In April last year, 16 senators signed a resolution calling for Duque's immediate resignation for his "failure of leadership, negligence, lack of foresight and inefficiency."
They said Duque's performance resulted in the "poor planning, delayed response, lack of transparency, misguided, and flip-flopping policies and measures" against the pandemic.
Duterte, however, had repeatedly defended Duque from the criticisms.