Former President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday said he would return to politics if his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio, gets impeached.
The elder Duterte added that he “will get out of his retirement to return to politics” and “will be forced to run for either vice president or senator.”
He was reacting to reports of alleged impeachment talks involving some members of the House of Representatives against “Inday Sara,” who has been at odds with lawmakers over her requests, since withdrawn, for confidential and intelligence funds for the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education.
“You know if you do that, I will return to politics… I will be forced to either run for senator or for vice president even though I’m old,” Duterte said in a GMA News report.
“I will be forced to come out of retirement. When I begin to talk… election is just around the corner, it will get messy. I don’t lose anything, I’m retired. But when it comes to that and it happens that I’m still alive and don’t have dementia, I’ll run for vice president… If Inday is the president, it’s okay,” Duterte said.
In a separate statement, Duterte-Carpio said that she will support any political plans of her father.
“Whatever President Duterte’s decision is, the family has full support for him. Just like whatever our decisions are as children regarding politics, the family has full support for us. We will support President Duterte’s decision the same way,” she said.
The Vice President does not deserve to be impeached over her office’s requests for secret funds, President Marcos Jr. has said in an interview in Hawaii on Monday.
“We don’t want her to—she does not deserve to be impeached. So, we will make sure that this is something that we will pay very close attention to,” Mr. Marcos said of his running mate in the 2022 elections.
The President said calls for the impeachment of high-ranking officials are not new, especially if there are people who seek to change the results of an election.
Duterte-Carpio on Sunday said she believed she still has the trust of President Marcos even as her office is doing “due diligence” on rumors that there are moves to impeach her.
Speaker Martin Romualdez also categorically denied claims there was a move to impeach the Vice President amid talk of fractures inside the “UniTeam” coalition led by Mr. Marcos and Duterte-Carpio.
“I’m not aware of anything… There’s been nothing filed, no news of that,” Romualdez said in a chance interview in San Francisco, California where he was part of President Marcos’ delegation to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit.
“I don’t know who your sources are but there’s nothing in the offing,” he added.
Mr. Marcos also said he does not see any crack in the “UniTeam.”
