Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte has confirmed he will run for vice president in a move critics say is an attempt to get around constitutional limits to presidential terms.
The 76-year-old president is notorious for his crackdown on illegal drugs that has killed thousands of mostly petty suspects, as well as his often vulgar rhetoric.
“I will run for vice president,” he said. “I’m worried about the drugs, insurgency. Well, number one is insurgency, then criminality, drugs.”
The Philippines has been struggling through the Covid-19 pandemic, with rising infections and death rates and a slow vaccination rollout, but Mr Duterte’s popularity ratings have remained high.
Polls suggest that running Mr Duterte in tandem with his daughter, Sara Duterte, currently the mayor of Davao City, as the presidential candidate would be a strong pairing, said Manila-based political analyst Richard Heydarian.
The idea of the two running together has been discussed since 2019, he said, though Duterte advisers have reportedly said that he has suggested he might not run for vice president if his daughter decides to announce a bid for president.
“The campaign for Sara Duterte has more or less kicked off, it seems, almost irrespective of what Duterte’s position will be,” Mr Heydarian said.
“A Duterte/Duterte tandem is increasingly looking like the formidable team to beat in the next year’s elections.”
Further muddying the waters, however, Sara Duterte posted on Facebook later on Wednesday that her father had told her he would run for vice president with his former aide, senator Christopher “Bong” Go, running for president.
She did not address her own aspirations, but said her father and Mr Go should announce publicly that they would run together if they have made that decision.
“I respectfully advise them to stop talking about me and make me the reason for them running or not running,” she wrote.
Philippine presidents are limited by the 1987 constitution to a single six-year term.
At least two former presidents, Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, have made successful runs for lower public offices after serving as president, but not for vice president.
If Mr Duterte goes ahead with his run, it is likely to face court challenges from the opposition, though Mr Heydarian noted the Supreme Court has strongly supported the president’s moves in the past.
A new opposition coalition, 1Sambayan, whose name means One Nation, said Mr Duterte’s decision came as “no surprise”, and made the coalition “more determined in unifying the democratic forces in responding to the challenge”.
“It shows a clear mockery of our constitution and democratic process,” the group said.
“The candidacy is both legally and morally wrong, and we trust that the Filipino people will realise his brazen, selfish and self-serving motives.”
Mr Duterte had previously hinted that he may run for vice president, and his confirmation on Wednesday came after a senior official of his PDP-Laban party on Tuesday said that the president had agreed to run as its candidate.
The 76-year-old “agreed to make the sacrifice and heed the clamour of the people” to run in the May 9 national elections, said Karlo Nograles, PDP-Laban’s executive vice president.
The vice president is elected separately from the president under Philippine law.
Those who serve in the post could potentially be propelled to the top role if the president dies or is incapacitated for any reason.
If elected vice president, the move would be reminiscent of the machinations of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who Mr Duterte once called his “favourite hero”, to hold on to power despite being constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive term as president in 2008.
Instead, Dmitry Medvedev was elected president and Mr Putin assumed the nominally subservient position of prime minister from 2008 to 2012.
Mr Putin was then re-elected president in 2012, and Mr Medvedev slid into the prime minister role.
“This is not to say that, should Sara Duterte become the president, that she will be essentially proxy for the president,” Mr Heydarian said.
“In Davao the two were together in charge (and) there were significant divergences in approaches and policy differences … so we may see some iteration of that, if ever the tandem makes it to the presidency.”
