Vice President Sara Duterte announced on Monday she will run for public office in the 2025 midterm elections after her brothers indicated they might already retire from politics.
“I heard that my brother, Mayor Sebastian Duterte, and my elder brother, Congressman Paolo Duterte, said that they will not run for office,” she said in Cebuano during a flag-raising ceremony in Brgy. Bago Gallera in Davao City.
“Maybe they won’t run in the next election, that’s why I am here to campaign for your support because I will run in the next election,” Duterte added without disclosing the position she will run for next year.
Her term as Vice President will end in 2028.
President Marcos said his running mate in the 2022 polls may be “testing the waters about what the reaction will be” with her announcement. He declined to comment further.
In November, her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, said he might make a political comeback if his daughter is impeached over the controversial P125 million in confidential funds that her office reportedly spent in just 19 days.
“If you do that, I shall be returning to politics, I will be forced, either I run for senator or vice president even if I am old already,” the Duterte patriarch said.
But early this month, he said his daughter will lead their family in politics.
“I don’t know about Pulong, I can’t read [his mind]. But Inday [Sara] probably still wants to punch. Let’s leave her there in Manila. But for me, I’m tired of politics. Count me out,” the elder Duterte said.
In May last year, the Vice President resigned from the ruling party Lakas-CMD.
She is the head of the Hugpong ng Pagbabago, a regional party that she founded.
In the recent Pulse Asia survey, the Vice President scored the highest approval and trust ratings among the four highest public officials in the country, with 74 percent and 78 percent, respectively.
According to the Constitution, “whenever there is a vacancy in the Office of the Vice President during the term for which he or she was elected, the President shall nominate a Vice-President from among the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives who shall assume office upon confirmation by a majority vote of all the members of both Houses of the Congress, voting separately.”
In 2001, then-Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo became President after the Supreme Court ruled that then-President Joseph Estrada resigned.
Arroyo appointed then-senator Teofisto Guingona as her Vice President.