Vice President Sara Duterte’s announcement that she would be vying for the presidency in the May 2028 elections should come as no surprise. Not even the timing of it.
Many commentators said the timing was too early, going so far as to compare it to the unfortunate premature declaration for the presidency by then Vice President Jejomar Binay (also a well-loved former mayor of another city, Makati) which eventually cost him what would have been an almost sure shot to be the next President of the Republic.
But the similarities end there. Before former VP Binay declared his candidacy all was well and everyone was cozying up to him. The attacks against Binay only started after he had announced his presidential bid. It didn’t help that there was an ongoing rift between Taguig and Makati for not only Bonifacio Global City but also other barangays that used to be part of the former military camp, Fort Bonifacio. Taguig’s Cayetanos were instrumental in the fall of and failure of the Binay presidential campaign.
Back to Sara Duterte. Her declaration was neither early nor premature. If at all, she waited too long. She had become a target long before she announced she was interested in the presidency. In fact, her very existence and positioning as the VP posed a continuing threat that not only warranted the dissolution of the UniTeam but also the rendition of her father, the former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte, to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague in the Netherlands.
And Sara Duterte knows she is going to have to run for president if their family is to survive the aftermath of a Marcos Jr. administration. She would have already known this as soon as the 2022 elections were over and new lines were drawn. The jig was up and it was time to claw at each other to get ahead in the political game of cat and mouse.
Her first clue? She wasn’t entrusted with her favored Cabinet post as Secretary of National Defense. Instead, she was given the Education portfolio. Surely an important post but of little political significance.
If you trusted your VP, you would have given her a post worthy of what she brought to the team to deliver the presidency to Marcos Jr. If not the Secretary of National Defense, she should have at least been given the Department of the Interior and Local Government post given her previous experience as a local chief executive.
But precisely because of her inherited popularity and the military’s loyalty to the old man Duterte, she was kept at bay.
Sara Duterte has nothing to lose at this point. The announcement was simply a mere formality. She was already being attacked with or without it so she might as well put it out there — so the entire world would know why she was being targeted in the first place.
Her impeachment trial is not a done deal. No one can say for certain how the senators will vote, if it even comes to that. The Marcos Jr. administration’s cards are out in the open with the inclusion of known Duterte allies in the Senate recently named as co-perpetrators in the ICC trial of former President Duterte.
But don’t count the Dutertes out just yet. The old man still holds a trump card in a country where dynastic succession via a sympathy vote or legacy candidacy has historically thrived.