Do we like Bong Go?
Our score: 4 out of 10. Real health work sits against loyalty to the drug war and open allegations nobody has tested in court.
Christopher “Bong” Go is the bloke who stood next to Rodrigo Duterte for two decades. He was executive assistant to Duterte as Davao City mayor from 1998, then Special Assistant to the President from 2016 to 2018, before moving to the Senate. His whole public identity is loyalty to one man.
That loyalty is the heart of the mess. In February 2026 the ICC prosecutor's charging document named Go as one of Duterte's co-perpetrators in the drug-war case. Go called the allegations “entirely unfounded, one-sided, unfair” and said he was never Presidential Management Staff chief. One outlet reported the papers allege a police quota and rewards system, allegedly overseen by Duterte and Go. No court has decided any of it.
The latest flare-up came in June 2026, when Rep. Paolo Duterte claimed on social media that ICC warrants had been issued against Go and two former police officials. The DOJ, PNP and DILG all said they had received no formal word, and the ICC hadn't commented. Go said he'd “leave everything to God” and that he hadn't broken any law. As of the reporting we found, nothing was confirmed.
On the harm test, Go's own words matter more than his boss's. In October 2024 he defended the drug war as widely supported in Congress and called the police reward-system claim baseless, and back in 2019 he said he'd go to jail with Duterte. On LGBTQ+ issues, 2019 reports have him backing the SOGIE equality bill and anti-discrimination protections, though he is reported as against same-sex marriage. We found nothing on his record on climate, vaccines or migrants, so that's a gap, not a pass.
Then there's the money. In October 2025 former senator Antonio Trillanes filed plunder and graft complaints with the Ombudsman, alleging nearly P7 billion in projects were steered to two firms owned by Go's relatives. Go called it a “recycled diversionary tactic”, denied wrongdoing and said he's not a contractor. The source we read shows the complaint pending, with no finding.
Fact-checkers have also caught him out. VERA Files rated false his claim in September 2024 that he'd long opposed POGOs, noting he was one of 17 senators who voted for the 2021 bill legalising and taxing them. A second check rated his remarks on businessman Michael Yang as needing context, since Yang had served as Duterte's economic adviser. That's a small sample, but both cut the same way.