It was in Laoag City, during a campaign sortie, when he first made the promise. Why? “Because he [Marcos] was a great president and he was a hero…” Duterte said. He could not have missed the political points he was bound to earn from that declaration. After all, vice presidential bet Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr, with the Solid North behind him, had courted Duterte for months to persuade him to be his standard-bearer. This inspired the creation of a group of Ilocanos supporting a Duterte-Marcos tandem called "AlDub," or Alyansang Duterte-Bongbong." It's also a fact that Duterte's many constituents in Davao are Ilocanos themselves who had migrated from the North.