Palace: Duterte's Monday night address to air Tuesday morning
MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte's address from Davao City, which was expected to be aired on Monday night, will be shown to the public on Tuesday morning instead, the Palace said.
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said last Thursday that the president would address the nation on Monday night, or a week since his last appearance on a video conference with members of the Cabinet.
"I can assure you that there will be another address on Monday," Roque said then. "The reason why he stays, he said he was avoiding COVID (coronavirus disease) but the work of the president continues."
President Duterte's taped address will be aired tomorrow, 9 a.m., on @PTVph | @alexisbromero
— Philstar.com (@PhilstarNews) August 24, 2020
The Palace also said then that President Duterte has been hard at work even if he is away from the capital. "Everytime we leave Manila, we bring with us mountains of documents for the president. I can assure, appointments alone constitutes mountains of documents."
RELATED: Duterte to stay longer in Davao
Roque and other members of the Cabinet were to fly to Davao on for the meeting. The Palace spokesman tweeted a photo of himself on a Philippine Air Force C-130 cargo plane on Monday afternoon.
Jolo blasts
Earlier Monday, two separate explosions on the same street in Jolo, Sulu that local security officials believe were set off by the Abu Sayyaf killed 14 people and left 75 others injured.
Joint Task Force Sulu and the Jolo local government have placed metro Jolo under lockdown in response to the attacks while the Philippine Coast Guard has put its personnel in southwestern Mindanao — including Zamboanga, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi — on red alert.
"PCG personnel in the region are augmenting the forces of the [Armed Forces of the Philippines] and the [Philippine National Police] in investigating the incident specifically in identifying its perpetrators, as well as in responding to casualties and in ensuring the safety of the residents against succeeding threats," the coast guard said in a statement.
At around 11 p.m., Roque told reporters that the president's message would be aired on Tuesday morning instead. "The meeting is still ongoing at 10:59 p.m. and will probably continue for at least one more hour," a tweet by News5's Maricel Halili quotes Roque as saying.
Duterte's addresses, usually portions of meetings with the Cabinet or with the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Disease, have often been aired late at night or, in some instances, past midnight.
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