DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 19 October) – Vice President Sara Duterte said that she has “no regrets” being the running mate of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. under the winning UniTeam Alliance in the May 2022 elections, explaining that her current post makes her “more resistant to political attacks” than if she had been mayor of Davao City.
In a two-hour press conference on Friday, Duterte said that it is inevitable that she would be targeted by the political allies of whoever won the presidency between then rivals Marcos and former Vice President Leni Robredo, because she is “being viewed as a strong candidate” for the 2028 presidential elections.
She said that it would have been easier to suspend or remove her if she stayed as a local chief executive.
“So I don’t regret running for Vice President. Just imagine if I was still mayor and they were chasing me now. Isn’t it very easy for them to suspend me? It’s so easy for them to charge me. It’s so easy for them to remove me from my position as mayor. Now, they cannot just remove me. They can drag me to hell. When they get there, I am still the President of hell,” she said in mixed Filipino and English.
On October 2, 2021, then Mayor Sara Duterte filed her certificate of candidacy (COC) for a third and final term with Sebastian Duterte as the vice mayor, amid calls from her supporters to run for president and replace her father, President Rodrigo R. Duterte whose term would then be ending on June 30, 2022.
She, however, subsequently withdrew her candidacy for mayor, nominating Sebastian as a substitute candidate, and joined the Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats, a national political party associated with former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
She then filed her COC for vice president and teamed up with Marcos of the Partido Federal ng Pilipinas in November 2021.
The vice president said that former Senate President Manny Villar once warned her that she could not escape political attacks, even if she stayed away from any national post, because the allies of the sitting president would do anything to secure their party’s victory in the next presidential elections.
“I already thought about it. They were running, right? BBM ran and Leni ran. Either of them would win. In a parallel world, either one of them would be president and I’m the mayor. So, I’m sure that people around them would still look for me there in Davao City,” she said.
She revealed that it was presidential sister Senator Imee Marcos who convinced her to run as vice president of her brother, as he might lose to Robredo if they could not secure the votes of the people from Visayas and Mindanao.
She said the Marcos camp “used her to win the presidential elections.”
Last June 10, Duterte resigned as secretary of the Department of Education and vice chairperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). Duterte then declined to state her reason for her resignation, but her decision came after the growing tension between the Duterte and Marcos families.
Following the public fallout of the Marcos-Duterte alliance, the vice president has repeatedly criticized the country’s chief executive, accusing him of “not knowing how to be president.”
She said that her supporters blamed her for not running for president in 2022, but added that “it’s not my fault that we are on this road to hell.”
“I do not regret teaming up with him. I’m sure there’s a reason from God for placing me in this position under that seal. I don’t know what God’s reason is. Sometimes, or all the time, we don’t see God’s reason until something else happens in our lives,” she said. (Antonio L. Colina IV / MindaNews)
