Sara Duterte as President: A speculative assessment

Sara Duterte as President: A speculative assessment | Daily Tribune

The prospect of Sara Duterte ascending to the Philippine presidency in 2028 invites serious scrutiny, not merely because of the legal clouds gathering over her vice presidency, but because her actual record in government offers a fairly clear window into what kind of leader she would be.

That record, examined without sentiment, is not encouraging.

Her tenure as Secretary of Education — a position she held concurrently as Vice President, a duality that itself raised questions about divided attention and accountability — was widely regarded as underwhelming at best.

The Department of Education under her watch failed to make meaningful strides in the country’s chronically underfunded and structurally battered basic education system.

Classroom shortages remained acute, the learning poverty rate among younger students barely budged, and the ambitious infrastructure targets that were announced with fanfare went substantially unmet.

For a department that absorbs the single largest slice of the national budget year after year, the returns on that investment during her stewardship were difficult to justify.

If one cannot move the needle on literacy and numeracy among Filipino children while commanding the largest departmental budget in government, what does that say about her executive capacity and political will?

The answer, arguably, is that Sara Duterte is more a political figure than a governing one.

Her brand is built on the considerable shadow cast by her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, whose strongman mystique she has attempted to inherit and channel.

Her political identity is rooted in personality and dynasty rather than in any coherent policy vision. She has not distinguished herself as a reformer, an innovator, or a technocrat.

The confidential funds controversy that now forms the backbone of multiple impeachment complaints against her points to a troubling pattern of opacity — a preference for operating outside the boundaries of transparent public accountability.

As head of state, these tendencies would not disappear; they would be amplified.

The presidency grants enormous discretionary powers in the Philippines, and leaders who have shown a reluctance to account for public money at the Cabinet level rarely become paragons of fiscal transparency when given broader authority.

A Sara Duterte presidency would likely be characterized by the same instincts that defined her father’s: a preference for strongman optics over institutional governance, a tendency to treat the political opposition as a personal threat, and governance by intimidation rather than persuasion.

Her alleged threats against President Marcos and his family — dramatic even by the rough-and-tumble standards of Philippine politics — suggest a temperament ill-suited to the patient, coalition-building work that effective heads of state must do.

What could she offer Filipinos as president?

Supporters would argue continuity of her father’s legacy, which still commands a loyal base, particularly in Mindanao, and among voters who equate toughness with competence.

She would likely pursue law-and-order narratives, possibly a revival of aggressive counter-narcotics policies, and a foreign policy that hedges between Washington and Beijing in ways reminiscent of her father’s mercurial geopolitical positioning.

But an appetite for toughness and actual governance capacity are different things.

A wannabe president who could not fix classrooms, could not account for discretionary funds, and whose response to political adversity has been threats rather than argument would enter Malacañang without a serious blueprint for addressing the Philippines’ genuine structural challenges — poverty, inequality, poor public services, climate vulnerability and the persistent erosion of democratic institutions.

The impeachment proceedings against her may ultimately go nowhere. She may well win in 2028.

But Filipinos who look past the surname and the theatrical bravado will find, on her record, very little evidence that Sara Duterte has the vision, the discipline, or the institutional respect that the presidency demands.