The Dutertes are not satisfied at being at the sidelines and they are threatening to make a grand show next year by fielding the father, ex-president Rodrigo and sons Rep. Paolo and Mayor Sebastian, in the senatorial race, outnumbering the confirmed Senate dynasts—the Villars, Estradas and the Cayetanos.
Vice President Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio, who moped when she did not get the defense portfolio in 2022 and resigned as education secretary on June 19, 2024, has been ordered by her mother, Elizabeth Zimmerman, to returned to her Davao City barracks and run for mayor in 2025. She was the bird of ill-omen who shattered the peace of June 26, 2024 by announcing that the Duterte agnates were running in the 2025 senatorial race, as if the Filipino people still want to see any Duterte elected to national office.
If Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio wants to run for Davao City mayor next year, what she should immediately do is resign from the vice presidency, vacate her office in Mandaluyong and settle her accountabilities, from the P221.4-million she disbursed in just 11 days in 2022 that the Palace categorized as her confidential and intelligence fund (CIF) when her office had zero CIF budget. That means reimbursing the state for the money spent for the purchases or leases of seven unnecessary satellite offices of the Office of the Vice President (OVP), the millions spent for fares by poor folk from Manila to Mindanao, the huge amounts for student assistance and burial expenses.
Unless she quits her post, Sara’s story about running again for Davao City mayor will be as apocryphal as the social media post about Ferdinand Marcos Jr. becoming the first human to land on the Sun. Are the people taking Sara’s words to be true after she howled that honesty is not needed in politics and credibility as well must go to hell? She sounds like the Chinese foreign ministry, which represents the Chinese squatting at Panatag Shoal.
Yet another astounding story Sara broke was that his brother, Mayor Sebastian, will just use the Senate as his springboard or trampoline for his presidential campaign in to 2028. Splendid bit of news since it would follow the pattern laid by the patriarch Rodrigo, who honed his skills in entertaining people and exterminating his enemies through the ballot, and letting the cleaners do their thing with the obdurate one in Davao City. Sebastian is still Davao City mayor, but his tongue has been wagging against allies who have kept their mouths shut while the Dutertes have been insulted by their enemies.
Baste wants Bong Go and Bato de la Rosa to defend the Duterte political dynasty, or perhaps take a bullet for Rodrigo, like what Michael Cohen used to say about his loyalty to Donald Trump, his boss. Cohen’s testimony and his receipts in the Stormy Daniels hush money case convicted Trump on 34 counts of fraud. Baste wants to collect now from those who owe them political debts and his broadsides against allies now looking for new bosses means a loyalty check is being run. That doesn’t mean the 358 firearms registered to Rodrigo might come in handy.
Sebastian for President in 2028 will certainly stir the hornet’s nest but the news is yet another trial balloon meant to unsettle those who are already preparing for the presidential race four years hence. Surely, the Dutertes are looking at a possible run by First Lady Liza Marcos in 2028, or a bid by Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez. The Duterte dynasty will be stretching the 1987 Constitution if they insist that another run by Rodrigo is legal since he will not be succeeding himself, a theory that cannot stand with hornbook doctrines and a misreading of the boilerplate language of the Charter and extant Philippine laws. But why not Sara for 2028 when she is just a heartbeat away from the presidency? Ask a male chauvinist pig about that.
Why the sudden talk of the Dutertes running for the Senate? Some manna from heaven must have come to embolden Rodrigo to spread the good news since a Senate run is not cheap at a conservative P350 million each. Is Michael Yang around along with the moneybags from southern China? Who knows if the gentleman’s agreement cut with Xi Jinping also requires mutual support for economic and political ventures? Hands clean each other, a Russian maxim says. The Filipino people must also remember that one Duterte regime is enough. Or hear the plea of Dagestanis protesting their mobilization for the Ukraine invasion: “We don’t have a present. What future are you talking about?”
