Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has confirmed she would not run for any position in the next midterm elections and would retire when her term as Pampanga representative ends in 2019.
The 71-year-old Arroyo, former president, made the announcement Wednesday in a CNN Philippines interview beamed nationwide.
“I am retiring. I don’t plan to run for anything in 2019, that’s sure,” said Arroyo, who said she wanted to write her memoirs.
Arroyo also said her son Juan Miguel, a former one-term party-list representative of Ang Galing Pinoy from 2004 to 2007 and one term lawmaker of Pampanga’s second district from 2007 to 2010, before her mother was elected congresswoman in 2010, would run for Congress in his mother’s congressional district.
Arroyo said she was disinterested in seeking the Prime Minister’s post under the proposed federal system of government.
“[I am] not just thinking [of it], I am retiring… I do not plan to run for anything in 2019,” Arroyo told CNN.
Arroyo, on her third and last term as representative of her district in Pampanga, added she would want to give the new breed of young lawmakers the chance to shine in the legislature.
“Yes [I will retire] because we all have to move on. People do reach retirement age and I was also saying that one of the blessings of being a Speaker now at this time is that I have come to work with the younger congressmen and seeing how they work, seeing how good they are,” Arroyo said, in a separate interview after attending the blessing of the Romana Pangan District Hospital in Floridablanca, Pampanga.
Arroyo added she was “very confident that the new generation will be very good in taking over the reins of government.”
Some political observers said Arroyo would be a shoo-in if she would run for the Senate.
But Arroyo said her focus now was to help President Rodrigo Duterte build a lasting legacy.
