MANILA - President Rodrigo Duterte's chief legal counsel Salvador Panelo will be joining the 2022 senatorial race after he filed his certificate of candidacy (COC) Friday.

He filed his documents along with other senatorial candidates endorsed by Duterte, who were also present at the Sofitel Plaza, where candidacy filing for national positions were held.

The Camarines-born Panelo graduated law in the University of the Philippines. He has been Duterte's Chief Presidential Legal Counsel since the President assumed office in 2016, and has defended Duterte's advocacies and measures, including the government's war of drugs. He is often clad in shining suits with eccentric colors during press briefings.

He earlier accepted the challenge of commuters' groups to commute from his home in Marikina to his office in Malacanang, after being called out on his insistence that there was no transportation crisis in notoriously traffic-laden Metro Manila.

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He was appointed presidential spokesperson in 2018, before Duterte reinstated current spokesman Harry Roque. During his stint as Duterte's spokesperson, Panelo came under fire for tagging Olympian Hidilyn Diaz in a supposed ouster plot in 2019 after presenting a "matrix" of the alleged conspiracy. Diaz vehemently denied the allegation.

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He was also the former legal counsel of the Ampatuans, the main suspects in the gruesome Maguindanao massacre which left 58 dead. He also served as the lawyer of former poll chairman Benjamin Abalos, after the latter was embroiled in an election scandal in 2007.